Read the comments first! The results have been a mixed bag.

Device Doctor was recommened by one commenter, although it won't back up your drivers.

 It has portable, U3, and installed versions. I just tried it and it appears to be accurate and it downloaded the one update it found very quickly. Plus...it's always free.

I think I looked at this at one time but I can not remember why I didn't get it. 

Slim Drivers seem to be working just fine for a free program although it may not have all the options as Driver Magician.

They always are, Wiz. I read some of the comments but I find it's pretty good after installing it myself. I'd love to hear what you think, though. Have you tried it?  

These weresome of the opinions... didn't seem too bad to me, I'll be glad to check out the software you suggested, though.

Philly: Slimdrivers has downloaded older drivers at times. I used it until it stopped being as useful as Driver Magician... backs up etc, if you have to roll back.

I never go by the thumbs up or down rating. Too many people rate the software without even trying it. That's why I read the comments, they are usually made by people who have tried it out. Good or bad, it's at least more accurate.

Btw, no need for backing up drivers by themselves if you make an Image back-up.

I do... and am glad you do too, but rarely do folks do it in time.... and  some folks don't, or can't afford the software/hardware... 

I try to alert folks. Sometimes I actually go to sleep and miss half the give away... Every piece of software has its good and bad points.

I respect your opinions, Wiz, so please pm me any stuff you've seen around and think is good so I can look them up. 

Driver Magician is flawed. Firstly it find incompatible drivers and says it's safe to install them. Secondly i don't know where it finds the updates but the last few times i have tried this software the drivers it downloaded have been infested with viruses and malware. A friend of mine used this software to update a driver on his PC and ended up with porn icons on his desktop and a completely trashed system requiring a complete format and reinstall of windows. Personally i wouldn't touch this crap with a 40 foot pole and my advice is for people to keep the hell away from this overpriced and quite frankly in my opinion dangerous program.

Those are the suggestions by users to improve the product(s), usually driven by the enticement of a free license. The comments contain the real feedback: Taken from the comments section of Giveaway of theday.  LINK

"Driver magician works well when backing up drivers but the update function is totally inadequate. It finds incompatible drivers and drivers older than the ones installed"

" I select download and it comes up with an error message saying: “Drivers update is disabled in the unregistered version of Driver Magician” and does not let me download… I check to make sure that it was registered and it is."

" I used this program one time before and got really unstable results. Quite often the drivers were either outdated or identical to the ones I already had."

"Did not find the most recent drivers. Did not know about several common hardware devices on my Win7x64. Also found drivers that were not for my hardware…even with correct hardware ID’s."

"Backup works very slowely.
If it cannot find all the driver info : programs looks like hanging.
unchecking unwilling drivers helps.
!!!! Update of drivers doesnot work with Give away Registration !!!!!

I am not impressed "

"I have a problem with the driver download times for where it decides to get the drivers from. I selected download for one of the drivers it said to update and it starts downloading at 2kb/s and will complete in 15 hours."

"This program installed easily on my Win 7 x64 machine, but it is still showing that it is “unregistered.”

"I too got the same error message as lea (Comment 5) “Drivers update is disabled in the unregistered version of Driver Magician”

" Driver Magician was a complete disaster.

1. Replaced perfectly good up to date drivers with older versions.

2. Did not recognise that I had a fairly important driver missing.

3. Installed drivers not related to any software on my system.

4. Ended up totally fritzing my system and I had to do a complete clean reinstall of the operating system and software."

There are good results as well, thus the mixed bag comment. I just wanted to inform folks of possible bad results. I was in no way dissing your post, I just wanted people to look into it carefully. (as they should with any unknown software)

All I can say, Wiz is that I at least installed it and registered it, and it works just fine for me... I do that with what I recommend, and really don't give all the credence in the world to what others say, especially when the vote is so heavily in its favor.

I do think that some of the positives and negatives anywhere are probably shills...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/your-money/22haggler.html 

Might give Driver Doctor a spin, though. Hadn't heard of it... although some negativity in the Forum there too. You recommend it?