>Hi,
>
>I was looking for a printer driver for the captioned printer for use on Win 7 64-bit and could not find it on Sharp site. But then Google brought me to a page where it seems that such a driver can be downloaded. The site is latestdriversupdate.com so it is not Sharp. I was wondering, is it safe to download a driver from an unknown site, not an official printer manufacturer site? Let me know what you think. TIA.

You're right to be concerned, it's a great way to get people to install Trojans on their own machines.

That said, there are *some* safeguards in the form of digital signatures - increasingly required for drivers on Win7, especially 64-bit. I found a link discussing this: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/install/drvsign/default.mspx but I'm not sure from that if Win7 64-bit printer drivers require a signature.

Be sure to examine the signature closely if it does have one - it could be a real signature issued to a fraudulent organization, or a real signature issued to a legitimate company used fraudulently by a third party. ISTR a recent case of the latter, where a significant tech company had to revoke a signature or cert because it had been used fraudulently by a third party to sign malware.