Review: Uniblue Driver Scanner 2009

Maintaining a PC’s drivers is one of those annoying tasks that’s dull but worthy. Although a lot of software applications products include automated checks for updates, the same isn’t true of hardware drivers, so usually you have to find and download them manually.

Uniblue’s new Driver Scanner utility promises to change all this by checking for driver updates automatically.

It does this by scanning your PC and comparing the driver versions to a database maintained on Uniblue’s servers. When it finds newer versions, it can download and install them for you.

The program’s interface is fairly uncluttered, although there are a few advertising links trying to get you to upgrade to other Uniblue products. By default, when you start the program all your PC’s drivers are scanned for updates – a process that can take several minutes.

When the scan is complete, new updates are flagged for each component, and you can choose which ones you’d like to download and install. Our only gripe is that the details of the new driver versions are never made clear to you – you simply hit the download button and it’s all done automatically.

We also found that when a driver installation fails, you’re not given much info either. You do get a chance to report problematic drivers or ignore them in future scans, however. The only other feature on offer is the ability to back up and restore all your drivers.

Driver Scanner doesn’t monitor your system constantly, and there’s no built-in scheduling, so you’ll still need to remember to run it regularly. Overall it’s a worthwhile tool with few competitors. It’s priced on a download plus annual subscription basis, although Uniblue says it will still work without program updates if you don’t renew it.

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