Now, I've received a number of complaints that my fastest possible
episodes haven't been fast enough lately. And to that, I would reply,
"Well, if you weren't all throwing things at me while I try to film the bloody things, maybe we wouldn't have
this problem." So, with that 15 seconds of your valuable life wasted, let's get
right into it. A driver is, as Microsoft defines it, software that allows your
computer to communicate with hardware or devices. Simple, right? But why do we
even need that? So, you've got a device. Let's say a sound card. You should be
able to just plug it in with no drivers and your music player, let's say Win amp
should generate a digital signal that says, you know, yo, sup dog. I need an E
flat up in this biz or something. And the sound card should make that noise,
right? Well, actually, yeah, that's basically how it works. And if there was
only one sound card in existence, it pretty much could. But there's a
problem. There are literally thousands of sound devices, and all of them will
work completely differently from each other. The signal that meant E flat in
our last example could mean dinosaur onion to another. And for everything to
work correctly, software makers would need to rewrite their software with
specialized signaling for your sound card along with every card that ever
existed and every card that ever will exist. It would be fine if every single
software developer was the freaking doctor. But this is the real world, not
my fantasy. So that's what a driver is. It acts as an abstraction layer or
translator. That way, the makers of your favorite programs only have to interact
with your hardware in one standardized language and the driver handles the
rest. So, that sounds relatively simple. Why do drivers cause so many issues?
Well, there are a ton of variables that exist for the programmers on the driver
side as well. Aside from our oversimplified Eflat example, your
hardware is capable of a great deal of amazing stuff. All of which we expect to
work absolutely perfectly. And even though standards exist, even if they
were adhered to perfectly, things like other devices and other pieces of
software can cause conflicts. And on top
of that, separate drivers need to be maintained for multiple operating
systems like Linux, OS 10, Windows, and the various flavors of each that exist
in the wild, each with their own universal language that the driver needs
to translate to. It leaves plenty of room for one of the variants of a driver
for a particular piece of hardware to have an imperfection or two and helps me
at least understand why sometimes a piece of hardware lacks support for the
OS I'm trying to use it with. Which isn't to say that the lack of an
official driver always precludes using the hardware on Windows anyway.
Sometimes if you know what you're doing, you can force install one and it will
mostly work. Driver files are usually INF files and Vista drivers can
sometimes be used on Windows 7 and Windows 8 and vice versa. So pick the
correct version of Windows, that is to say 32-bit or 64-bit, not Pro or
Ultimate or whatever. Extract the files from the installer and give the manual
browse feature in Device Manager a crack before you totally throw up your hands
and give up. This trick has saved my bacon with wireless network adapters and
other things a handful of times. Speaking of saving my bacon, this is
from Dollar Shave Club and it contains their wonderful smelling shave butter.
And the only thing that could be manlier about it would be if it smelled like
bacon. This majestic six blade razor, also from Dollar Shave Club, on the
other hand, couldn't be more manly if it smelled like bacon, was covered in back
hair, and belched the pledge of allegiance every morning before a breakfast made of bacon. Dollar Shave
Club saves you time and saves you money by delivering wicked highquality razors
and other bathroom supplies directly to your door once per month. So you can be
shaving with a fresh blade every week without the hassle of running to the
store. That way if the guy selling you the razor drops fbombs all over the
place, brandishes a machete as he packages it, and then rocks out with a
leaf blower for some reason, he is safely on the other side of the country
for the Americans. Or if you're in Canada, I guess it would be the other side of the continent. And if you're in
Australia, the other side of the world.
And if you're anywhere else, then I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do for you
right now. But for anyone in those three countries, visit
dollarshaveclub.com/Linus to learn more and sign up now. Oh, and they also have
Man, do I have to talk about this? Please don't make me talk about
this. Okay. They also have peppermint scented
butt wipes for men. Maybe if I used these instead of normal butt wipes, I
wouldn't stink. And the human interaction made possible by my non-stinkiness would give me the
confidence to tell you no. Again, that's
dollarshaveclub.com/Linus. Thanks for watching, guys. Like the video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it,
share it if you like machetes, and as always, don't forget to subscribe to
Techquickie for more fastest possible episodes just like this one.