Top 7 Technical Myths

7.) No magnets near my PC

This would have been true in the case of a floppy, but a hard drive and laptops are immune to magnetic radiation because they are free from magnetic composition.
And neither are thumbdrives, memory cards and CDs, so don’t get hyper and go crazy with those fridge magnets.
Most of the storage devices, like an SD and CompactFlash memory cards, are immune to magnetic fields.

6.) Radiation from a PC monitor will cause cancer

No! It won’t. Radiation from your cell phone might give you a brain tumor, but a monitor is harmless.
The radiation from your monitor is too weak and also at a different frequency, so rest assure you are totally safe.
In fact, according to many studies the amount of ultraviolet radiation produced by a computer monitor is a small fraction of that produced by florescent lighting.

5.) Cookies from sites track every move

Cookies do track your activities on a website. But they are simple things which will make sure your next visit to the site is simple and hassle free.
Cookies are basically small text files that help the browser remember specific information like your id and password, preferences, shopping cart information etc. Plus they are usually deleted when you shut down your browser.
To delete cookies in IE, go to Tools, click Internet Options, click the Privacy tab, and click Advanced to override automatic cookie handling.

4.) Always ’stop’ a USB device before unplugging

This applies only in a few cases. This is said to ensure that the USB device is not unplugged while data is being read from or written to it
. Doing so would corrupt the file being transferred or maybe damage the USB drive. However, when the USB is in the idle mode it can be unplugged without going through the entire process of ‘Safely Remove hardware’.
For devices like keyboard, mouse, printers, scanners, you can just unplug them when not in use.

3.) Switching off power without shutting down damages the PC

Many believe that turning power off without shutting down PC physically damages their hard drives. However, this is an age-old myth and has no grounding.
But, users will lose their data if they were working and did not save before switching off the power.
Also, many users believe that one should shut down PC every couple of hour so it can rest. This may be fine, but shutting down your PC every few hours may actually be harmful to your PC.
Components in the PC are most stressed when they have to either boot or shut down. Doing that every few hours will keep it under constant stress. However, this doesn’t mean you must keep your computer on forever. Operating systems do need a shut down once in a while, because even the best OS’ crash if not given a rest.

2.) Emptying recycle bin ensures permanent deletion

Well many may relax when they delete their trash files.
However, this is no reason to cheer. In fact, Windows just marks the area of the disk occupied by such files as empty, but does not delete the data.
There are many file recovery software available such as TOKIWA DataRecovery that enables you to undelete files, even if they have been removed from the recycle bin. Such programmes can track the deleted files in the hard disk.
Recovery of the deleted files is possible as long as the disk area is not overwritten by any new disk.

1.) If you have antivirus you can click anything

Though an anti-virus is a must-must, but one cannot just relax especially in a 24X7 connected world.
No single antivirus programme can completely safeguard you against virus, trojan, malware and spyware attack.
There may be chances that the anti-virus programme loaded in your PC may not be effective against spyware or other kinds of malware not classified as viruses.
Also, in case of a bigger attack, the security vendor may take long time to issue a security update.
Hence, users should make sure that their PCs are loaded with anti-spyware programme. Also, keep regularly updating your anti-virus software