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Geek Note: It was my pleasure to spend some face-to-face time with my fellow Geeks this past Saturday at the Northwest Florida Association of Computer Users Groups’ annual Tech Expo.  Today’s column contains answers to some issues that I wasn’t able to answer during my live Q&A session. 

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Q: Something called “DriverUpdate” has been telling me that my PC has 18 drivers that are out-of-date.  The program says the company is certified by Microsoft, but I can’t really tell by looking at it if this is legitimate.

 – Tom G.

A: My research leads me to conclude that DriverUpdate is legitimate—ish. While it may actually update your drivers, that’s not necessarily something for which you need a service, especially a service which attempts to panic you by identifying over a dozen perfectly running drivers as needing updating, then tries to charge you $30 for the favor.  Some of the claims I read about DriverUpdate say that it always finds drivers that are out of date, including on freshly installed copies of Windows, and even immediately after DriverUpdate itself is allowed to update drivers.  There were also some reports of it installing unwanted software.  So, my advice is to get this panicware off of your PC and stick with Windows Update.  It will automatically update the vast majority of your system’s drivers, and the few that it doesn’t can easily be obtained for free and updated in a couple of minutes. 

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Q: My computer has lots of icons on the Windows desktop.  Do all these icons use system resources (CPU, memory, etc.) even when I’m not using them?

A: The simple answer is that other than the little bit of time it takes to draw them when the Desktop is refreshed, icons do not add any appreciable workload to the system, and certainly not enough that you could perceive the system running any slower because of their presence.  This question generated some chatter from other attendees about ways to interact with the desktop and icons, including attendee Tom D., who asked if I was familiar with Win 7’s ability to hide the Desktop icons.  Tom’s description of the feature didn’t immediately ring a bell with me, so I asked him to send me a screen capture after the Expo, which he did, and I figured out where of our misunderstanding came in.  There are several related features in Windows for manipulating various aspects of the Desktop, and I thought Tom was talking about the area next to the Notification Area (what many people call the System Tray) that allows the user to toggle a view of the Desktop that is free of any windows.  That feature exists, but it doesn’t have any effect on the Desktop’s icons other than making visible the ones that are covered by running applications.  However, I had forgotten that the Desktop’s context menu contains a selection that allows you to make all the icons on the Desktop disappear.  To do that, you right-click in any empty space on the Desktop, and from the context menu, select “View”.  Slide the menu off to the right and you’ll see a selection that says “Show desktop icons”.  If the icons are visible, it will have a checkmark next to it.  Selecting it will toggle the icons on and off.

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There were lots of other great questions covering topics ranging from Windows 10 updates to whether a particular user should buy a tablet or a laptop.  My open Q&A forum was only one of dozens of classes that took place throughout the day.  Next year’s Expo is already in the planning stages, so if you think you might be in the Florida panhandle next January, mark your calendars for Saturday, January 28, 2017!