Tech Myths DEBUNKED!

by Sarah Kimmel on October 13th, 2010 | 3 Comments »

I love tech news. I even watch a tech news show daily, and have several tech news podcasts on my Zune that I watch on a daily basis. Technology changes so frequently that if you aren’t watching to the news, you could be under some assumptions that used to be true, but are now complete myths!

Common Tech Myths

Here are some of the most common tech myths:

1. Running your rechargeable device battery all the way down will preserve its life. In the past this myth was actually true, but it’s not anymore, and here is why. When a majority of the batteries were made from Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) the battery would sometimes incorrectly “remember” how much of a charge it could hold if it wasn’t fully drained before charging. Now that batteries are typically made of lithium ion it can actually lose maximum battery charge if it is completely drained.

2. You should regularly defragment your hard drive – First of all, Windows Vista and Windows 7 actually do this for you in the background. You don’t have to worry about manually running it, ever. If you have an older operating system though, I usually only recommend a defrag after you’ve deleted a ton of files, or uninstalled a few programs. When you delete and remove programs you leave holes in your hard drive that end up getting filled with fragmented files. A defrag will help pull all of the files together in a nice, efficient cluster.

3. More bars on my cell phone equals better service – The only thing that the bars mean is the strength of the signal coming from the nearest tower. If there are a lot of people connected to that particular tower, you could have horrible service, even if you have full bars. Also, iPhone providers announced this past summer that they have, until now, been incorrectly calculating bar strength by about 2 bars. Nice.

4. You need to buy an expensive HDMI cable – In the past, with VGA and component cables, the signal emitted from your Blu-Ray or game system was very complex and the smallest signal loss along the way meant big changes in the picture. HDMI cables transmit the signal in simple 1’s and 0’s, so it would take a HUGE signal loss for your picture to be affected. A $3 HDMI cable looks almost exactly the same as a $100 cable. So save your money and buy a couple more Blu-Ray movies instead.

Although Sarah Kimmel lives in Utah with her husband and two children, she left her heart in Newport Beach, California when she relocated a couple of years ago. She's a help-desk administrator by day and blogger by night. She enjoys mentoring bloggers on blogging and SEO and loves to teach workshops. Find her online at Tech4Mommies and @Tech4Moms.