PC World: Biggest PC Myth.

[BespinReactorShaft]

Magnets zap your data.
Definitely something kinda new to me. My casing has a magnetic snap-shut front panel and I was scared to death of what it could do to my hard drives... ::LOL::

"A magnet powerful enough to disturb the electrons in flash would be powerful enough to suck the iron out of your blood cells,"
::LOL:: Did he watch X-Men 2 one too many times? It was arguably the coolest scene in the movie though.

Windows' Japanese edition uses haiku error messages.
Duh huh huh... But it ain't that funny anyhoo.

Turning off your PC daily to save power shortens its life.
Reminds me of a certain joke back during school, about each male person having a fixed amount of --ah, better not. Anyhow I appreciate the "shutdown -s -t 00" tip... will try it out soon. I'm looking for a good and effective countdown-to-shutdown proggy for XP right now.

Saddam Hussein bought PlayStation 2 consoles to use in Iraq's weapons program.
And yeah it also constitutes irrefutable evidence to justify war on Iraq.

DOS is dead.
OS'es are not fashion objects. And I'm still playing Star Control 2 now and then, how dare u.

Only a pricey surge protector can keep your devices safe.
Advice: unplug. The following thread totally OWNZ for those living in storm friendly places.
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=1336732

 

[BespinReactorShaft]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

They forgot to mention, UNPLUG the cord, before actually working on the machine.

Possible dumb question-- if you were to unplug the PC, wouldn't it also remove any obvious path to ground? And if I were to be standing on a concrete floor, how will the static be removed?

 

[Calin]

Nice thread... about the batteries, there are batteries engineered to work in full charge-discharge cycles (the marine deep cycle batteries could be an example). Other batteries are engineered for other parameters (a car battery would loose alot of its original performance after even a single full discharge cycle).
About the full wrist strap thing... while the electrostatic discharge might very well destroy hardware, it can also create "areas of weakness" that will stop functioning later. Anyway, a fall is more dangerous than static electricity (at least for hard drives)

Calin

 

[MrMaster]

Originally posted by: Cerb

Originally posted by: BurnItDwn
I'm only surprised about the whole "turning off the computer without properly shutting it down is fine" thing. Sure 99% of the time there won't be any problems. But I have seen MANY a corrupt Oracle Table, Index, Rollback Segment, or entire DB go corrupt because of power outages .. or systems being shut down while writing data. There are many cases where a proper shutdown is EXTREMEMLY important. Why risk that 1% chance for problems if you have an alternative.

I guess most people don't run DBs on their home PCs though.

And wnyone who does it is just an impatient idiot, anyway. You hit the power button. It takes maybe 5 seconds, and it turns off. Maybe as much as 30 for a store-bought bogged-down POS.

No store bought machine here, lots of stuff however, it does take forever for it to shutdown. I run tons of services on my machine.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: ming2020

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

They forgot to mention, UNPLUG the cord, before actually working on the machine.

Possible dumb question-- if you were to unplug the PC, wouldn't it also remove any obvious path to ground? And if I were to be standing on a concrete floor, how will the static be removed?

Easy. The issue isn't "earth ground" at all, but rather, relative static-electric charge levels (potential voltage differential). It doesn't matter whether the parts are at earth ground potential at all. The problem is when you have a difference in potential, the static charge tries to equalize out that difference. So if the first thing you touch is a computer component, that voltage will equalize itself -through- that component. If the transistors on that device, are rated for 5v normal operation, but have a breakdown voltage of, say (pulling a number out of the air here, I'm not an EE) 30v, but a static discharge has a potential voltage difference of, say, 3000v, then there's going to be some problems there.

The worst part is, those very sensitive computer components, may not fail outright, but instead be damaged in very subtle and often untracable ways, and may continue to operate for months, but be "flaky", or simply mysteriously die completely, some time down the road, for no apparent direct reason at all, due to the damage that those compoenents sustained from the static discharge.

So the safe thing to do, is to equalize the potential voltage, between you, and the ground of the device that you are working on. Hence, touching the outer case/chassic of the PC, should do that nicely. Those grounded wrist straps do things even better though, they actually have a resistor in them too, to slowly dissapate any charge that could potentially build up, and also prevents it discharging all at once.

However, it should be noted, that when working with life-threatening voltages, attaching grounding leads to one's body, especially in ways that could lead to a voltage-path across the heart, is also strongly NOT recommended. This would apply, for example, to working inside of a CRT. Likewise, it is not recommended to work on a PC, especially with a grounding strap, while the PC is still plugged into the wall, or plugged into a telephone line. (Yes, it's rare, but if the phone line "rings", while you are touching it, that's 90v right there. It's actually happened to me once, believe it or not. Now I always disconnect the phone cord when working on a PC, besides the AC cord. I don't think that the phone "ring" voltage is fatal, but it'll definately startle you.)