1. Vista is slower than Windows 7
When Windows Vista came out, it soon acquired a reputation for being slow and a resource hog. Once Windows 7 arrived, people were quick to tout it as the speedy, slim operating system that Vista should have been.
We conducted performance tests on a handful of laptops and desktops using both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista and Windows 7, shortly after the latter OS was released. While Windows 7 did seem to speed things up somewhat, a few tests actually showed some slowdown. Applications launched more slowly across the board, and the Gateway laptop saw a slight increase in startup time.
As it turns out, the "snappy" feeling Windows 7 engenders has to do with Registry tweaks and minor changes to the window manager that make the OS feel more responsive, even though it isn't that different. The verdict: Windows 7 is faster, but not by as much as you may think.
2. All smartphones suffer signal loss from a grip of death
When early iPhone 4 adopters discovered that touching a certain spot on the exposed antenna could cause the phone to lose signal strength, reduce data speeds, and even drop calls, Apple insisted that all smartphones suffered from a similar defect.
We tested that claim with five different smartphones. We looked at RF signal strength, data speed rates, and call quality in areas with weak and strong signals.
While every phone we tested was affected by a "grip of death," none went so far as to drop calls, as the iPhone 4 did. Bottom line: If you don't have an iPhone 4, you don't need to worry too much about this antenna issue.
3. The desktop PC is dying
Sure, laptops are cheaper and more powerful than ever and can meet all your basic computing needs. But saying that the desktop is on its deathbed is like saying that because all most people need is a Geo Metro, the pickup truck is obsolete. Power users who need desktop-caliber performance in a laptop must pay a significant premium, and if they want a Blu-ray drive, a better GPU, or a 3D display, they must buy a new model. Also, people who like to tinker with their PCs have fewer options with laptops than they do with desktops.
Meanwhile, the desktop PC market is evolving to meet users' demands. People who want a larger display but don't like the looks of a tower can buy an all-in-one system. Others want a computer that fits nicely next to their 50-inch HDTV -- a home theater PC. And students, who typically benefit most from a laptop, can buy both a solid all-in-one PC for gaming and movies (ahem -- "multimedia projects") and a cheap, lightweight netbook for taking notes in class for the same price as a single moderately powerful laptop (which would be more expensive to replace if it were broken, lost, or stolen).
4. High-priced HDMI cables make your DTV look better
High-quality cables have been a staple of the audio/video business for decades now, and for good reason: As an analog audio or video signal travels from one device to another, it's susceptible to interference and disruption, meaning that the image data as it leaves your DVD player isn't 100 percent identical to the image that shows up on your TV because certain parts of the signal can get lost on the way there.
However, digital audio/video standards like DisplayPort, DVI, and HDMI don't have this problem because the data being transmitted over the cable isn't as sensitive as an analog signal; it consists entirely of ones and zeros, and a tremendous drop in signal voltage has to occur before a one starts to look like a zero at the receiving end. When this does happen, you'll usually see some kind of white static "sparklies" on your TV as the set attempts to fill in the blanks itself, but this typically happens only over very long HDMI runs (8 meters and up). For shorter cables, the cable quality shouldn't matter.
5. LCDs are better than plasma for HDTV sets
Don't believe the hype: Your local HDTV salespeople may be trying to upsell you on a spiffy new LCD, but there are plenty of reasons to pick a plasma instead. Plasmas still handle darker scenes better, have a wider range of viewing angles, and are generally cheaper than LCDs (especially at larger sizes). Panasonic and Samsung continue to manufacture plenty of plasma sets (including a line ofhome 3D TVs and a gigantic, superexpensive 152-inch 3D display). You can read more about plasma vs. LCD displays.
LCDs are catching up in a few respects, however. LCD sets with LED backlighting and higher refresh rates can compensate for some of the traditional problems of LCDs, and they suck up significantly less power than plasma sets do, so the higher price may be offset over time in your electricity bill.
Despite the remaining advantages of plasma, it's worth noting that some manufacturers are dropping out of the plasma display market (Pioneer, most notably, and Vizio), and California plans to ban power-hungry TVs, so the writing is undeniably on the wall: Plasma isn't dead yet, but it may be finished in a few years.
6. More bars on your cell phone mean better service
The signal bars on your cell phone display indicate the strength of your cellular signal to the nearest tower. But if you're connected to a tower that lots of other people are connected to, you could have a strong signal and still have poor service as everyone's calls are competing for scarce network resources. Once your information arrives at the cellular tower from your phone, it has to travel through your service provider's backhaul network (which connects the tower to the Internet). And if your provider's network isn't up to snuff, you could have a flawless connection to an empty cell tower and still encounter poor speeds and dropped calls.
When 3G services were tested in 2009, it was found that signal bars were poor indicators of service quality in 12 of the 13 cities in which we tested. In San Francisco, for one, signal bars correlated with service quality in only 13 percent of test results. Additionally, if you use an iPhone, you might just be seeing inaccurate readings. Apple recently announced (in connection with the iPhone 4 antenna issue) that the formula it had been using in all iPhones to display signal strength was "totally wrong" and often reported the signal as two bars higher than it should have. Oops.
7. Over time, inkjet printers are much more expensive than laser printers
To figure out how much a printer's consumables will cost you over time, you take the price of the ink or toner cartridge and divide by the estimated page yield per cartridge, finding your cost per page. Traditionally, laser printers have had a higher initial purchase price, which was balanced by their lower cost per page versus inkjet printers.
However, as inkjet printer manufacturers began to release more efficient models (ones with separate ink tanks for each color, or higher-yield cartridge options), the cost-per-page gap has closed dramatically. Businesses needing cheap, fast printers, for example, could do well with either the Epson B-510DN inkjet (1.3 cents per black text page, 14.7 pages per minute, $600 retail price), or one of the more economical laser printer models, such as the Oki C610dtn (1.1 cents per black text page, 19.1 pages per minute, $700 retail price). Home users and students have fewer options -- paying less for the printer means paying more for the ink. To its credit, the Canon Pixma iP4700 (2.7 cents per black text page, 7.4 pages per minute, $100 retail) has reasonably priced inks.
Keep in mind that the inkjet printers you see going cheap with big mail-in rebates or included with laptop purchases generally aren't the type that can hang with a laser printer in speed and costs. Instead, you'll end up paying more in the long run via expensive, low-yield ink cartridges -- to the point where it can even be cheaper to buy a new printer than to refill the ink in your old one.
8. People with more monitor space are more productive
Begging your boss for an extra display at work? You might sell her on the idea if you tell her that you'd be 30 to 50 percent more productive than you are on your single 18-inch display. At least, that's what a 2008 study from the University of Utah(commissioned by NEC, mind you) found for text and spreadsheet tasks.
NEC, naturally, was quick to trumpet the results as a way to move more of its widescreen displays. However, the study also found a point of diminishing returns. Productivity gains fall in a bell-curve distribution once you hit a certain amount of screen space. For a single-monitor setup, over 26 inches is too much, while dual-display gains top out at 22 inches.
If you're planning on using that second display for email, Twitter, or other Internet-related distractions, however, you're probably going to end up being less productive overall.
9. Internet Explorer is less secure than other browsers
I first looked up Symantec's twice-yearly Internet Security Threat Report, which yielded the total numbers of reported vulnerabilities for 2009: Firefox had the most at 169, followed by 94 for Safari, 45 for IE, and 41 for Google Chrome. For more-recent data, I turned to the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, which hosts the National Vulnerability Database, a searchable index of reported computer vulnerabilities. A search of data for a recent three-month period yielded 51 such vulnerabilities for Safari (including both mobile and desktop versions), 40 for Chrome, 20 for Firefox, and 17 for IE.
Such counts alone aren't the best way to measure a browser's security, however. A browser with 100 security flaws that are patched a day after being discovered is safer than a browser with only one exploit that hasn't been patched for months.
According to Symantec's report, the average window of vulnerability (the time between when the flaw is reported and when it's patched) in 2009 was less than a day for IE and Firefox, 2 days for Google Chrome, and a whopping 13 days for Safari. Clearly, Internet Explorer is doing fairly well. Nevertheless, you should still consider a few important factors before deciding to jump ship back to IE.
10. You're safe if you visit only G-rated sites
If your PC has ever had a virus, you probably know about the raised-eyebrow, mock-judgmental looks you get when you tell that to other people. After all, if you had been a good little PC user and stayed in the G-rated Web, you would have been safe, right?
Not so, says Avast Software, makers of Avast, a popular antivirus suite. "For every infected adult domain we identify, there are 99 others with perfectly legitimate content that are also infected," its chief technology officer, Ondrej Vlcek, reports. In the United Kingdom, for example, users are far more likely to see infected domains with London in the name than sex.
So porn alone doesn't necessarily mean you're opening yourself up for infection. Which makes sense -- porn-site operators depend on subscriptions and repeat visitors to do business, and infecting your customers with spyware isn't the best way to do it.
If you find yourself on a generic-looking Website with popular search keywords in the title, or a site that's rearranging your browser window, you're likely to end up stuck with some malware -- whether it's about porn or about hotels in London.
11. You should regularly defrag your hard drive
Your hard drive has to decide where to write your files on the drive platter, and as you fill up the drive, your files will be scattered more and more widely across the platter. This means that the drive's read/ write heads take longer to find the whole file, since they take more time skipping around the platter to find the different parts of the fragmented file. However, fragmentation isn't an issue these days, for several reasons, including the fact that hard drives are bigger, more RAM and optimized OSes help reduce the impact of fragmentation, and solid-state drives don't need to be defragged at all.
12. Your cell phone will cause your plane to crash
The Federal Aviation Administration still has a ban on using cell phones during flight to avoid interfering with the plane's navigation and communication systems. In fact, the Federal Communications Commission instituted its own ban in 2007 for a different reason: When we're on the ground, our cell phones automatically locate the closest cell tower, but when we're 30,000 feet in the air, we're roughly the same distance from several different towers at once, meaning that multiple towers might sense our call and reserve that cellular channel for us -- which could prevent other people from using the tower and interfere with existing calls. But your phone won't set off a chain reaction ending with a plane crash.
13. Magnets will annihilate your hard drive
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