Microsoft announced last week that Windows 8 will not be a distribution channel for third-party application updates. The statement doesn’t change the current arrangement for (read: Windows driver updates ) in its regular “Patch Tuesday” loads. Some users had been hoping that Microsoft would tackle the responsibility of delivering application updates through a single, uniform updater tool, provided by Microsoft through the OS. Microsoft put the kibosh on that, saying that application updating is just too darned complicated.

Change Means That Third-Parties Are On Their Own For Distributions

This doesn’t change things for Windows driver updates, however, not all third-party manufacturers update their drivers through the Windows Update feature. The change in policy for Windows 8 means that users will have to remain on duty when it comes to keeping their Windows applications up-to-date.

In terms of device drivers, the status quo doesn’t guarantee that users have the latest device drivers, and that’s going to continue in Windows 8. Right now, the experience of updating device drivers is a mixed bag. With some third parties participating in Windows Update and others doing their own thing, users need to keep track of what’s being updated regularly and what isn’t.

For busy users, or for those who are not technically savvy, a better approach to driver maintenance is using a driver management utility like Driver Detective. Driver Detective determines – based on your computer system – what driver updates you need and downloads them right to your computer. The updates are installed and a backup copy of the current driver is stored locally, in case something happens to the active copy. You can also roll back to an older version of the driver if a new driver update doesn’t behave the way you think it should.

You don’t have to remember to check for updates. Driver Detective does that for you. You also don’t have to keep track of a lot of hardware configuration information, because Driver Detective does that, too! This is ideal for manufactures that use multiple third party component options within a single model. Driver Detective determines what your system needs – not based on the model number of your computer – but based on the components actually installed in your system. If you update a video card, add a different mouse, or attach a new peripheral device, Driver Detective can track and maintain those devices, too.

Driver Detective is one of the best driver management utilities available today. Millions of users have already downloaded it and rely on it to keep their computer systems up to date. Download your copy today and say goodbye to outdated device driver problems!

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It’s hard to believe, but your Windows device drivers can have a profound effect on the battery performance of your laptop computer. How? As it turns out, the decision to enable or disable power management features at the device driver level can significantly improve or diminish your battery life.

Laptops Are Meant To Use Low Power

Laptops are meant to use low power, and that sometimes means making adjustments to the way devices consume power. When you do a driver install and you just do the default configuration, (as most users do – because it’s the “safest” installation, right?) most often, you’re guaranteeing that your battery life will be short. Why? In the absence of any other configuration, the default firmware initialization for most devices calls for the highest available power. If all of your laptop devices use high power, your battery life will definitely suffer. Select devices in high power mode can reduce your battery life by as much as 25%!

The default configuration can’t possibly take into account what your actual power usage needs are, so it assumes the worst and makes as much power as possible available to a device. On a desktop computer, power management is generally not a consideration. On a laptop, where the manufacturers have already made compromises on the chipsets, the maximum memory capacity and the processor speed, these concessions must extend through to your devices as well.

If you’re not in a situation where you need your wireless mouse, or your network card, you can manage the power consumption of these devices much more effectively, and ensure that you have enough battery life to get your work done.

Doing power management via the device driver also means having the most recent device driver loaded. Manufacturers often tweak their driver-level power management capabilities, and the only way to take advantage of this is to make sure you have the most recent device driver for your computer.

With Windows, you can’t always be certain that Microsoft will pass through device driver updates to you. That has nothing to do with Microsoft; some third-party developers don’t give their driver updates to Microsoft. For those devices, it’s up to you to go out and get the latest driver updates – or at least check regularly for them.

That’s why I recommend Driver Detective. Driver Detective takes the guesswork out of device driver maintenance. It’s highly reliable and helps to ensure that you’ll always have the drivers your computer needs.

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Backing up and restoring (anything!) is a touchy subject with users because most users don’t have a valid backup-and-restore plan. Some users assume that their data are being backed up. (Not usually). Some users have a limited data backup plan, which backs up application data, but doesn’t back up system data. Some users back up system configs but leave their data hanging out. A few very savvy users back up everything. In most cases, however, system and configuration data aren’t backed up. Which means important components, like hardware drivers, aren’t backed up either.

Know What You’re Backing Up and How To Access It

If you ask a user how to back something up, s/he might be able to tell you how to set up a backup, or even where the backed up data are stored. That’s good, but the step few users (and technicians for that matter) take is learning how to restore data from a backup. When a restore is needed, amazingly few people can actually correctly and completely restore data, even if the restored data are intact, ready and waiting.

Why is this important? Having a backup of your data (whether they’re application data or system data) can save significant time, effort, expense and aggravation. Knowing where the backup is stored and how to restore the data is critical. Why even have a backup if you don’t know how to restore the missing data?

When it comes to system data, few users can tell you even simple things, like where the hardware drivers are stored. For the record, drivers are stored in the C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\DriverStore folder. You can make a backup of this folder “by hand” by simply copying the contents of the folder to another folder, or better yet, a removable storage device. If you ever need to reload or replace the driver, you have a fresh, working copy available.

You might argue that this step is unnecessary, since you could go to the manufacturer’s website to download the correct driver. That assumes you have Internet connectivity. If you’re having driver problems or system problems, you can’t assume that you’ll have access to any network, so it’s best to keep a backup of your Windows hardware drivers handy.

For me, the better way to back up drivers – and to manage the entire hardware driver process – is to use Driver Detective. Driver Detective monitors all of the drivers installed on your computer, and stores a backup copy, in case a driver becomes corrupted or goes missing. Driver Detective also looks out for updated drivers, retrieves them and installs them for you. Download your copy of Driver Detective today and see for yourself what a difference it can make!

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Intel has released a hardware driver update that can boost the graphics performance of some computers by more than one-third. Intel released a graphics driver update for its “Sandy Bridge” processors. According to Intel, the update will improve performance on the its 2nd generation Intel Core processors with Intel HD graphics by as much as 37% on some ultra-low voltage platforms.

Driver Updates Can Deliver Performance Improvements

Ultra-low voltage devices are usually the super-thin or compact notebooks, and have been widely used by Hewlett Packard and Samsung. According to Intel, these devices will see the most improvement, but any device with a Sandy Bridge processor will benefit from the driver update. The driver is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. The upgrade will improve playability on certain 3D games and other graphics-intensive applications.

Intel is also working on improvements to its processor architecture and expects to release its Ivy Bridge processor early next year. The Ivy Bridge processor will be optimized to handle multiple 4K HD video, among other things.

The driver update is a good reminder that routine driver maintenance can deliver more than just patches, fixes and stability to an existing driver. Users sometimes take driver updates for granted, assuming that the updates are offered to “fix” problems. When everything is working, there’s little incentive to update a driver.
In this case, users can experience a significant performance boost just by updating a driver. Updating drivers isn’t hard work, but it can take a lot of time. If you know a driver update is waiting, you can download it, or in some cases Windows will download it for you.

If you apply the update and for some reason don’t like it, you’ll need to go back to the manufacturer’s site to download the older version of the driver and re-install it. Driver management software like Driver Detective will enable you to roll back from a driver update without all of the fuss. Driver Detective keeps backup copies of the current driver and provides rollback capabilities if the new driver application doesn’t work as you would like it to.

In addition, Driver Detective will go out and find new driver updates, so you don’t have to worry about missing out on performance boosts, patches and fixes again. Driver Detective is easy to load, easy to configure and easy to use. Download your copy today and find out why more than 1,000,000 users have turned over their driver management to Driver Detective.

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