If you are over 30 years old (like me) you have probably opened a box of some computer component and inside there was a CD with drivers. A few days ago I was cleaning and found about twenty of these optical discs with drivers. Nowadays, no component bring a CD with driversbut do you know the reasons?
In the past, graphics cards and motherboards in particular used to come with a driver disk. The driver disk for the motherboard was especially important, as we often found that the network card was not detected, sound card or the USB ports once Windows is installed.
But these discs are no longer present in component boxes these days. There are several reasons why it is no longer necessary to include a driver CD, and in fact, doing so would be silly.
Reasons for the disappearance of driver CDs
The first and most important reason is that 99% of users no longer have a CD player. Before, everything was on a CD or DVD, but nowadays optical discs are almost extinct. You download games from digital stores, you watch series and movies online on Netflix, Disney, HBO or wherever, and you download drivers from the web or use tools like Driver Booster.
We were commenting that in times of Windows XP or earlier, you could install the operating system, but you were missing the network driversound or USB, among others. In addition, a very generic graphics driver was installed to work while you installed the good driver.
Things have changed a lot and since Windows 7 and especially since Windows 10, the operating system includes generic drivers for absolutely everything. It allows the user to navigate the system and connect to the internet to download the good drivers. So there is no point in adding a disk with drivers that nobody will use.
Another reason is that the drivers for the disks were always outdated. This means that the driver was, so to speak, just to make the component work and little else. The manufacturers had the vain hope that the user would go to their website and download the latest drivers. Only one driver happened and it is the one for the graphic cardand not always.
NVIDIA Currently offers GeForce Experience and AMD the Radeon Software tool Adrenaline for driver management. When a new driver is released, we receive a notification of its availability. Using these applications we can download and install it without any problems.
For the rest of the drivers We can go to the Windows built-in update system, which also checks for new drivers. Alternatively, we can use programs like Driver Booster, which avoid having to go to the manufacturer’s website for updates.
The last reason is that it allows them to reduce costs. In fact, the cost of an optical disc can be 1 euro for the component manufacturer, which is very generous. But as we know, any savings that can be made and profits increased is always welcome.
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