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Old 01-25-2015, 08:13 PM   #129
eschwartz
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Location: The Beaten Path, USA, Roundworld, This Side of Infinity
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BWinmill View Post
Device driver updates, presumably. There are certainly companies that provide updaters for device drivers. AMD comes to mind for video cards, though I have seen it in other cases as well.
Those would be firmware updates.

Companies usually provide updates for their own products.

Makers of graphics cards usually provide a utility for managing that hardware, which comes with an updater. You can always rely on the drivers MS ships, but gamers would prefer the performance improvements from keeping up-to-date via the vendor software.

Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe View Post
I think He means hardware device driver updates, as in updates to the device drivers for installed hardware. I am reasonably certain, as he owns a Surface tablet, that he was talking about the many, and well advertised deficiencies in the way the hardware functions. Notably devices such as wireless AC did not always connect or the video controller overheats, or the dock ports stop functioning or supplying power to the tablet.

They manifest as an update notification because Microsoft is updating them.

Pretty sure this is not generally the reason for updates, but even if it were I see it as no more urgent than any other.

Helen
See above.

As far as I am aware, driver firmware updates should not appear any different from any other updates.

And only the really important ones make it to Windows Update, there are scads of driver updates that languish on the manufacturer website.

Commonly-accepted wisdom holds -- don't update them! Unless you are trying to fix a specific problem.

Last edited by eschwartz; 01-25-2015 at 08:16 PM.
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