Understanding What a ‘Driver’ Is

what printer driver

Most people don’t really understand a lot of computer jargon, and the word ‘driver’ is no exception. Maybe as a result you’ve done online searches for things like: “what drivers”, or something similar and looked for answers that made sense.

Please understand that’s not a criticism — if the term never made sense before, it’s only because it was never explained to you in an understandable way.

Don’t worry, it’ll all make sense by the end of this article.

I have a simple way to explain it that will just make sense for you. This article can act as an entry in your own internal computer dictionary, if you will.

First off, just to make sure you have the basic background to follow what I’m talking about, I’m going to quickly explain the difference between “hardware” and “software”.

It’s actually not at all hard to understand — “hardware” refers to all of the physical pieces of equipment, such as your mouse, your screen, the hard drive, and so on.

“Software” would be all of the parts of the computer that you really aren’t able to see or touch directly. Software would include things like a word processor, a Web browser, Windows or the Mac OS, as well as all of your personal files like individual emails, photos, music, etc.

Here’s another way to 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.

With me so far? Alright let’s talk more specifically about drivers.

Here’s the easy way to grasp what a driver is. Imagine that every piece of hardware, including your printer, your mouse, etc., talks a different language.

So one speaks German, another one speaks English, another one Swahili, etc.

So when you plug in a new printer and turn it on, your PC says hi and the printer replies in a foreign language 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 comes to the country but doesn’t know the local language. The diplomat needs an interpreter to help them communicate with the locals.

That, simply put, is what a driver is — an interpreter that helps your computer talk to a given piece of equipment. And (usually) you need a different interpreter for all of the equipment that you hook up to the computer.

Get it?

Now occasionally, 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 put into the computer.

But regardless, the computer needs that driver before it can talk to the printer or whatever other device you may have hooked up to the computer.

I hope you now understand what a driver is.