Snappy Driver Installer is the only truly Open Source project and is free to use. It doesn’t have ads, bloatware or premium features for which you have to pay. Unlike many applications of this class, Snappy Driver Installer can be used without the Internet connection because it has a full set of drivers in its driverpacks.
Let’s narrow down to driver installers which work using driverpacks. SamDrivers includes three application for driver installation:
1. DriverPack Solution(DPS) by BadPointer(formerly) and ArtX
2. Drivers Installer Assistant(DIA) by Romeo91
3. Snappy Driver Installer(SDI) by BadPointer
First release
DPS - 22.06.2008
DIA - 12.05.2009
SDI - 09.02.2014
Development status
DPS - only interface and bloatware have been being updated over past year.
DIA - Latest release: 28.04.2014.
SDI - active development.
Size
DPS - 34 MB (291 files)
DIA - 44 MB (189 files)
SDI - 1.3 MB (42 files) Without localization and themes - 1 MB(one file).
Dependance and standaloneness
DPS - Depends on IE. Writes to registry.
DIA - Depends on vbscript libraries. Installs them without asking the user.
SDI - Works on Windows 2000 and above. Doesn't leave traces in the system.
Indexing time
DPS - 280 secs (4:40)
DIA - 123 secs (2:03)
SDI - 19 secs (13 secs on indexing and 6 secs on compressing)
Start up time
DPS - 10 secs
DIA - 3 secs
SDI - 0.5 sec
Driver selection algorithm
DPS - It has many well known problems which are fixed in SDI.
DIA - It used to lag behind DPS but at this point it has catched up with DPS.
SDI - It takes in account much more information about devices and drivers. It's possible to see a full list of compatible drivers for each device and pick a driver manually but it's not required since the list is sorted that best drivers end up being on in the beginning of the list. The point is DPS doesn't do driver ranking.
Installation method
DPS - devcon.exe. It is as reliable as installing via Device Manager.
DIA - DPInst.exe. It often fails to install even correctly picked drivers.
SDI - Win32API. It is as reliable as installing via Device Manager. Automatically clicks on "Continue" when asked about installing unsigned drivers.
How is the developer of Snappy Driver Installer related to DriverPack Solution?
BadPointer is a former DriverPack Solution(DPS) developer. DPS is written in JavaScript which is very slow and throws scripting errors due different versions of IE. Support for IE 6.0 can't be dropped because Windows XP comes with it and it would be inconvenient to require the user to install IE 8.0 before running DriverPack Solution.
The current implementation of algorithm of choosing and installing drivers is made entirely by BadPointer. Since he left DPS, there was no one on the DPS team who understands that code enough to be able to work on it. Over the last year the only GUI and bloatware have been being updated while long known problems(notably, sound drivers, touchpad instead of mouse and Intel USB 3.0) were never addressed and aren't likely to ever be fixed.
BadPointer had been planning to rewrite DPS from scratch in C/C++ for a long time while fixing all known problems but he end up creating Snappy Driver Installer which is technically both a fork and a rewrite of DPS.
DriverPack Solution has been around since 2008. From 2011 and forward it outperformed all applications in this class. Snappy Driver Installer was first released in February 2014 and upon its release it left DriverPack Solution far behind in terms of reliability, speed and other metrics.
Both DPS and SDI use the same driverpacks which are made by SamLab. It means that he has to make sure that his driverpacks work with the weakest installer and it has its price.
Driverpacks greatly grew in size because SamLab had to include multiple duplicate drivers in order to trick DPS into installing the correct driver even if it would rather install the wrong one. He also sometimes had to modify drivers. Some drivers can't be included in driverpacks because DPS would try to install them on the wrong hardware resulting in BSOD. Sometimes it's impossible to force DPS into installing correct drivers and the users keep sending bugreports about the same known issues.
If support for DPS could be eventually dropped, driverpack size would be smaller, extraction would be faster, more drivers could be added, there would be no need to modify drivers, the developers would not be distracted by bugreports about the issues which aren't relevant to Snappy Driver Installer.
