The Computer Term ‘Driver’ Defined

June 28th, 2009

In this article, I’m going to explain a computer term that, like so many computer terms, isn’t very well understood by most people. And in many cases, isn’t understood at all. Maybe as a result you’ve done web searches for things like: “what driver”, or something similar and hoped for understandable answers.

Of course, as always, remember I’m not criticizing you — if the term never made sense before, it’s merely because it was never explained to you the right way before.

Keep reading and you’ll be surprised how much sense it makes.

I have a simple way to explain it that will just make sense for you. By the time you’re done reading this article, you’ll understand this piece of computer terminology better than most people do.

Before I begin, just so you have the basic background to follow what I’m talking about, let me just quickly take a moment to explain the difference between “hardware” and “software”.

It’s actually not at all hard to understand — “hardware” refers to all of the tangible pieces of equipment, such as your mouse, your computer’s screen, the hard drive, etc.

“Software” refers to all of the parts of the computer that you can’t really observe or handle directly. Software would include things like a word processor, your email program, Windows or the Mac OS, plus all of your own files like individual emails, pictures, MP3s, etc.

Here’s how you can think about it: hardware is like your brain, a physical part of your body, while software is like your mind or your thoughts — the non-physical part of yourself.

Software runs on hardware, just like your thoughts “run on” your brain.

Understand? Now let’s talk more specifically about drivers.

Here’s the easy way to understand what a driver is. Imagine that every piece of hardware, including your printer, your mouse, and so on, speaks a different language.

So one speaks French, another one speaks Russian, another one Cantonese, etc.

So when you plug in a new printer and start it up, your PC says hi and the printer replies in a foreign tongue the computer doesn’t understand.

So it needs an interpreter.

And when I say interpreter, I mean just like in the real world, just as if a foreign diplomat visits the country but doesn’t understand the local language. They need an interpreter to help them talk with the locals.

That, basically speaking, is what a driver is — an interpreter that helps your computer talk to a particular piece of equipment. And (most of the time) you need a different interpreter for all of the equipment that you hook up to the computer.

Understand?

Now fairly often, the driver may be “preinstalled” on your computer (in other words, the computer already has the interpreter ready and waiting in case it’s needed) and in other cases, it needs to either be installed from a disk, or downloaded off the Internet, and then installed on the computer.

But either way, the computer needs that driver before it can speak to the printer or whatever other thing you may have connected to your computer.

I hope you now understand what a driver is.

The Computer Term ‘Driver’ Defined

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