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Busting the Biggest PC Myths



 
 
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Old June 30th 04, 03:01 AM
Ablang
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Default Busting the Biggest PC Myths

Busting the Biggest PC Myths

We expose the bad advice that wastes your time and money.

Gregg Keizer
From the August 2004 issue of PC World magazine
Posted Monday, June 28, 2004

Magnets zap your data.
For venerable floppies, this statement holds true. We placed a 99-cent magnet
on a 3.5-inch floppy for a few seconds. The magnet stuck to the disk and ruined
its data.

Fortunately, most modern storage devices, such as SD and CompactFlash memory
cards, are immune to magnetic fields. "There's nothing magnetic in flash
memory, so [a magnet] won't do anything," says Bill Frank, executive director
of the CompactFlash Association. "A magnet powerful enough to disturb the
electrons in flash would be powerful enough to suck the iron out of your blood
cells," says Frank.

The same goes for hard drives. The only magnets powerful enough to scrub data
from a drive platter are laboratory degaussers or those used by government
agencies to wipe bits off media. "In the real world, people are not losing data
from magnets," says Bill Rudock, a tech-support engineer with hard-drive maker
Seagate. "In every disk," notes Rudock, "there's one heck of a magnet that
swings the head."

Want to erase data from a hard drive you plan to toss? Don't bother with a
magnet. Overwrite the data that is stored on the media instead. For flash, fill
up the drive with anything, like pictures of your beloved dachshund. Unlike
with magnetic media, from which experts can usually recover at least some
overwritten data, once new data is written to flash media, the old data is gone
forever. To overwrite the contents of a hard drive, try Eraser from Heidi
Computers.


Using a cell phone on a plane interferes with the navigation and communications
systems of the aircraft.
"I've never experienced a navigational problem that could be traced to a cell
phone," says one veteran pilot who didn't want his identity revealed. "From
everything I've read, cell phones and most avionics shouldn't conflict."

So why do flight attendants make you put away your gear before takeoffs and
landings? "That's more for making sure [we] have people's attention and for
[individual] safety," he says. "If I have to hit the brakes and abort a
takeoff, I don't want a laptop flying across the cabin."

The Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates cell phone use in a plane,
has a different view: "The concern is that cell phones would conflict with
onboard avionics," says Paul Takemoto, the FAA's electronics guru.

Is there scientific proof that cell phones can make planes go haywire? Some. In
2003 the Civil Aviation Authority--the FAA of the United Kingdom--ran tests
using simulated cell phone signals in a chamber (not in an actual aircraft) and
found problems. In some cases, the compass froze, some instruments displayed
errors, and audio communications were difficult to hear due to interference.

Until additional tests prove otherwise, Takemoto says, the FAA prefers to err
on the side of caution.


If you don't 'stop' a USB device before unplugging it from a PC, you'll screw
things up.
When you unplug a USB device without first "stopping" it in Windows
(accomplished by clicking the Remove Hardware icon in the taskbar), your PC
makes a bing-bong sound and usually pops up a message scolding you for the move
or warning that what you just did can delete data saved on USB storage devices
or damage hardware.

We're cautious about unplugging a device while it's still writing data (an
action USB flash-drive makers always warn against) because doing so can cause
major damage. Case in point: One PC World editor unplugged an external USB hard
drive that was doing some activity in the background; he lost all his data and
damaged the drive itself.

If you wait until the device stops writing data and then pull the drive out,
you're unlikely to experience serious problems. Although Windows takes you to
task for such rashness, even Microsoft downplays the peril. The company told us
that any damage will "depend on the USB device, but in general [unplugging a
USB peripheral] shouldn't affect the system."

To see if the task has negative effects, we unplugged and plugged a bunch of
USB devices, including a camera, a printer, a USB flash drive, and a scanner,
without first "stopping" them in Windows. The only problem was Windows' failure
to recognize our USB flash drive after we had unplugged it and then immediately
plugged it in again. If that happens to you, wait a few seconds between
unplugging and plugging. If that doesn't work, reboot Windows. And if that
doesn't work, run the Add Hardware wizard from the Control Panel to make
Windows "see" the USB device. For more on USB devices, visit USBMan.

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http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/...062804X,00.asp



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Unknown

"If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased." --
Katharine Hepburn
 




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