First of all i would like to thanks all of you because today this blog reached 6 million pageviews. As you all know, many links are dead since the driver database hosted on the 3rd party webhosting deleted due to some unexpected reasons, and I'm working hard to fix all of them.
So, Driver and utilities, 2 common terms when we installing drivers. Drivers simply make you pc/system detect and identify your hardware, simply in computer terms "installing the hardware" , while utilities is only an application software that you can use to tweak the hardware you just installed.
For example if you use AMD Radeon graphic, you will download the catalyst Driver software which comes with Driver for the Graphic and catalyst software to adjust the graphic properties and configuration. Without utilities your hardware will work just fine, but without the driver you cannot run the utilities because utilities require the hardware installed in your system.
For most compaq laptop the drivers distributed as below:
chipset : driver only
Lan: Driver only
Webcam : new model -
only utilites (for vista and windows 7 base model)
old model - utilities + Driver (for model build for XP)
Hp and compaq provide cyberlink youcam for the utilities. For new model, no webcam drivers provided since windows 7 already install generic usb video driver for the webcam. So Hp and compaq didn't provide them. But, there will be problems with old model like c700 and f700, which some of them installed automatically and some of them did not. In this case i already provided general webcam dirver for old model to work with windows 7 which you can read here.
VGA : Driver + Utilities (intel, nvidia and ATI)
Quick Launch : Driver + Utilities
Touchpad : Driver + Utilities (btw i prefer to use driver only)
Wireless : Driver and Utilities (must download separately)
For the wireless, compaq or any other laptop manufacture equip thier model with several type of wireless device. FOr example COmpaq CQ40 comes with 3 type of wireless device which is atheros, broadcom and intel. But all use one utilities which is HP wireless Assistant which you can download for free.
Bluetooth: Driver + application
The bluetooth application is similar for all model except for the drivers, but over the years most of HP model use Broadcom bluetooth while acer provide varieties of bluetooth devices such as broadcom and atheros.
You'll find other drivers such as MEI , (intel management interface), turbo boost (for latest model only) and sata driver. This is what i know about driver and utilities, and maybe there are flop in my post which you can add or fix it in the comment section below. Thanks for reading