SOTW: Driver Detective
OK, a couple of caveats here. One…I’ve written about all the freeware I use. Two…this isn’t exactly freeware. So I’m cheating a little and that’s fine. I figure that is what the world of computers and the internet is all about isn’t it?
I’ve had some troubles with my video card. It’s an NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS. I love it. It’s one of the best AGP cards available (yeah, I’m behind the times). But the problem is I’ve been having trouble updating the drivers for it. In fact I’ve been a bit concerned about several drivers for different devices for my computer.
So I did a quick search and came up with this program. First of all…it looks fantastic. The interface is very user friendly and it quickly figured out what active drivers I have on my computer and…low and behold…yes my 7800 GS driver is out of date. WOO HOO!
But…here is where the lack of freeware comes in. Unfortunately you’ve got to pay to go much further than the discovery of what is out of date. I’m guessing it’ll do some sort of automatic update download thingie for the correct driver. It would be awesome if it did. But that would cost me $30. Hmmm…nah.
However…this IS freeware. In other words if freely (and easily) told me about my out of date drivers. So now I update manually. Sure a nice button click to fix ‘em would be nice…but that isn’t free, is it?