Hey everyone, so I’ve been hearing a lot about Device Drivers these days, and I was wondering if anyone could comprehensively say exactly what one is, why they are important to designers and the best industry standard ones there are around?
Thanks!
Are you serious?
A device driver is just the software installed on a computer to control whatever peripheral piece of equipment might be connected to it, like a printer, scanner, drawing tablet or other device. There are no “best industry standard ones;” they’re typically specific to the devices they’re designed to drive.
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I sure couldn’t live without VueScan. (Well I could, but it would cost more money.)
VueScan is a well maintained scanner driver option to extend the life of your scanner beyond the date the manufacturer decides to support it. Between OS changes and Adobe changes, it’s kept my 6-year-obsolete, perfectly good backlighting slide scanner up and running.
If anyone uses scanners any more…
Right, thanks everyone. That was what I thought a print driver was, but then I kept getting questioned about them and which one I had and which one I should have and I was like ???..I have no idea…???
Maybe I was missing something?
This clears it up for me, thanks!
I deal with printer drivers on a daily basis, and it’s arguably the most common instance where folks encounter installing a driver, or updating a driver - But everything from your CPU and graphics card, to larger external devices all have a driver of sorts.
It allows the computer to acknowledge the device, as well as communicate to and from the hardware.
In the print world, some drivers offer different functionality of the hardware itself, some print controller drivers required for one print device, may render an older one useless.
For example, the world renown company EFI, maker of the Fiery Controller, recently decided to make Command Workstation 6.3 incompatible with digital presses 2 years old and prior. 14 years in the industry and not once did an update ever hinder workflow or press compatibility.
A very good reason to switch over to Caldera. 
Thanks everyone!
Big help.