This is the text of the article that I mentioned on our last phone
meeting. From HowtoGeek ...
12 of the Biggest PC Myths That Just Won’t Die
hacker
Computers are like anything else. Myths and urban legends have built up
over time, passed from person to person. Some myths once had a grain of
truth, but are no longer true thanks to technological progress.
A few myths are simple misunderstandings, while others exist to help
people make money from you. Windows alone has many unnecessary
Windows-tweaking myths build up around it. No, you don’t need to
disable services or delete your pagefile.
Hackers Are Trying to Hack Your PC
Yes, it’s a dangerous Internet full of malware and social engineering
schemes out there. But the Hollywood fantasy of a “hacker” actively
trying to compromise your PC just isn’t accurate at all.
Attacks are automated. Your computer absolutely could get malware that
attempts to log your keystrokes and steal your personal information. You
probably will get the occasional phishing email trying to get your
credit card number, bank details, or social security number.
But there’s no “hacker” out there typing at a terminal screen, probing
for holes in your PC. If something is probing for holes in your PC, it’s
probably a botnet probing for open security holes on unpatched computers.
Unless you’re a high-value target — say, at a big business or government
agency — there are no hackers out there attempting targeted hacks on
your computer. Attackers are taking the shotgun approach.
Hacker Activity Stealing User Information
There Are “Clean” Windows Freeware Download Websites
The Windows freeware download scene is bad and getting worse. Even
SourceForge has turned to the dark side. Remember when uTorrent was a
great program well-respected by geeks? Well, they’ve bundled software
that maxes out your PC’s CPU to mine BitCoin.
All freeware download sites are bad these days. Big download sites like
Download.com, Softpedia, FileHippo, and SourceForge often add their own
garbage to the freeware they offer for download.
Even the “good sites” host garbage-filled installers. We spoke to the
owner of MajorGeeks, and he informed us that he’d have an almost-empty
download site if he refused to offer programs bundled with junk software.
If you’re downloading from a program’s official website, you’ll often
have junkware pushed on you in the installer, too. Ninite is the only
trustworthy centralized Windows freeware site we’ve found, and it offers
a fairly limited selection of software.
You Have to Turn Your Computer Off At Night
Shutting down your computer isn’t something you should regularly have to
do, assuming you’re using a computer made at any point in the last decade.
No, you don’t want your computer running at full-tilt all night. But
putting it to sleep makes it use almost no power, and it’ll be ready to
go immediately when you turn it on. On a typical laptop, just closing
the lid should make it sleep. Even powerful desktop PCs can use
low-power sleep and hibernate modes.
Computers can be set to automatically hibernate after a while, and
they’ll use no power in this mode — but all your open applications and
work will be ready when you sit down at your computer again. Going
through a full shutdown every night and restart the next day isn’t
necessary at all and just wastes your time. You might want to reboot
occasionally, but you don’t need to shut down every day.
Exhausted woman sleeping in front of computer
Automatic Updates Will Always Break Your PC
Automatic updates aren’t as scary as they seem. Some people go out of
their way to disable Windows updates and even browser updates because
they’re worried about things “breaking.” Yes, sometimes Windows updates
do break things.
But, overall, automatic updates are good. They close security holes and
keep your computer working properly. Breakages are rare. Security holes
are a bigger concern — it’s usually best to just enable automatic
updates for your operating system, web browser, plug-ins, and other
software and have them stay up-to-date automatically.
If you don’t trust a company to responsibly install automatic updates,
you probably shouldn’t be running their software in the first place. On
Windows 8 and 10, automatic updates no longer force reboots of your PC
and are generally less obnoxious. You can also prevent Windows 7 from
automatically rebooting to install automatic updates with a quick
registry hack.
Internet Explorer is Slow, Vulnerable, Non-Standard, and Bad
Among geeks in the know, Internet Explorer is a joke. Microsoft is even
replacing Internet Explorer with a new browser named Edge in Windows 10
to get away from Internet Explorer’s reputation.
But recent versions of Internet Explorer are actually pretty good.
Internet Explorer 9 improved things dramatically, and IE 10 and 11 are
even better. Modern versions of Internet Explorer support a lot of the
modern HTML standards found in other browsers and have speedy JavaScript
engines. Internet Explorer also has a “protected mode” sandbox and a
multi-process design, two important features Mozilla Firefox still
doesn’t offer. Some tests have even found that Internet Explorer is
easier on a Windows laptop’s battery than Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.
No, we’re not saying you necessarily need to use Internet Explorer —
we’re still mostly Chrome users here at How-To Geek. But Internet
Explorer isn’t the laughing stock it used to be.
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In-Use Memory is Bad
Modern operating systems try to use as much of your computer’s RAM as
possible. This is true for everything from Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X
to Android and Apple’s iOS. Modern web browsers also use quite a bit of
memory.
This is a good thing! When data is in RAM, your computer can access it
more quickly. It makes sense to leave applications, data, temporary
files, and everything else in RAM where it can speed up access times in
the future.
Crucially, empty RAM is entirely useless. If your computer does need
more RAM for something, it can instantly purge some of that cached data
from your RAM to free up space. If you look at your resource usage and
see high RAM usage, that’s probably a good thing — as long as your
computer or device is performing well.
You certainly don’t want to use a “memory optimizer” or “RAM booster” on
Windows, or a “task killer” on Android. These applications purge cached
data your RAM, making it look more empty but slowing down your computer.
Manual Defragmentation and Expensive Defragmentation Utilities Help
Here’s what you need to know about defragmenting a modern computer:
Don’t worry about it. Windows contains a built-in defragmentation
utility that it automatically runs on a schedule. You shouldn’t need to
open it and run it automatically — it’ll all happen automatically. Maybe
— maybe — if you install a very large PC game and need maximum
performance, you might want to run a manual defragmentation right after
the installation. But that’s a rare occurrence, and you don’t need to
run manual defragmentation processes regularly. For example, Steam has a
feature that will defragment a single PC game’s files only — you could
just use that.
Third-party defragmentation utilities just aren’t worth paying for,
either. For example, Diskeeper Professional costs $70. For that much
money, you can actually purchase a solid-state drive and upgrade your
computer. Even if the defragmentation utility would help speed up your
mechanical hard drive a tiny bit, the SSD will be much, much faster.
Yes, you could get cheaper defrag utilities, but you’re better off just
putting that money towards and SSD.
Codecs Are Required to Watch Videos Online
There was a time when you needed codecs to watch videos online.
RealPlayer, QuickTime, Windows Media Player, and DivX were all often
necessary. Sometimes Java was used for videos, and later came
Microsoft’s Silverlight. Nowadays, most videos should play with either
the HTML5 video feature in your browser or the Adobe Flash plug-in. A
few websites may still be using Microsoft Silverlight.
But you don’t need to install codecs to watch videos on the web. If you
do click a link on social media or another website and are asked to
install codecs, don’t — it’s a trick to get you to install junk you
don’t want on your computer. If you’re told you need to download codecs
to watch a downloaded file, don’t do that either — just get VLC. Be sure
you get VLC from the official site at videolan.org, not other websites
that bundle it with garbage.
Viruses and Malware Are Why Your Computer is Broken
Is your computer not performing well? “It must have a virus,” some
people think. But this isn’t really true. In fact, modern malware is so
profit-driven that you might not even notice a performance change if you
have a keylogger running in the background.
Sure, it’s possible that your computer is infected by malware and is
using its resources on behalf of a botnet, mining BitCoin and
participating in DDoS attacks against legitimate websites. But viruses
aren’t usually what slows down a computer. Perhaps you have too many
programs running at startup or your browser is loaded down with
unnecessary add-ons. Or there may be an actual hardware problem — it’s
not just a mysterious “virus” that makes your computer slow and sick.
Your Antivirus Will Always Protect You
Most people do understand that antivirus software isn’t perfect —
nothing can function perfectly 100 percent of the time. But many people
seem to think that antivirus software is pretty effective. The truth is
scarier. Antivirus software is a helpful last line of defense on
Windows, but it’s nothing you should rely on completely. Even Symantec —
makes of Norton Antivirus — have said that antivirus software fails to
stop most cyberattacks.
Worse yet, most antivirus software doesn’t even protect you against
obnoxious software you don’t want. Antivirus software allows obnoxious
adware and spyware that inserts itself into your web browser, forcing
you to use worse search engines and pushing additional advertisements
onto you. Heck, free antivirus programs usually bundle this junkware.
This doesn’t mean the sky is falling, and it doesn’t mean you should
abandon antivirus completely. But antivirus should be your last line of
defense behind other security precautions.
Clearing Your Cache Will Speed Up Your PC
Some applications store cache files, which are offline copies of files
they’ve already downloaded. They hold onto these files in case they need
them again, so they can be accessed from your hard drive instead of
re-downloaded. This saves time and bandwidth.
Your web browser has its own cache full of bits of downloaded web pages,
scripts, images, and more. Tools like CCleaner will wipe this cache to
free up space, but that’s not necessarily a good idea. Regularly
clearing away this cache means your browser has to redownload everything
every time you use it — it’ll slow down your web browsing. You save a
bit of disk space, but that space fills right back up again with more
cache files.
snails on mouse
PC Cleaners, Registry Cleaners, Driver Updaters, and Paid Uninstallers
Are Helpful
All those Windows system tools you see advertised around the web just
aren’t necessary, either.
PC cleaners are usually scammy, promising to dramatically improve your
computer and finding all sorts of “issues” with your PC if you run them
in free mode. PC cleaners might be able to delete some temporary files
and free up space, but you can just do that with CCleaner or Windows
Disk Cleanup.
Registry cleaners are similarly useless. Your registry just doesn’t need
to be cleaned — those extra entries in the registry are tiny and won’t
slow down your PC.
Driver updaters are also bad. You don’t always even need the latest
versions of drivers — except graphics drivers, and graphics drivers have
built-in updaters. You’ll regularly get driver updates via Windows
Update, anyway.
Paid uninstallers won’t help you uninstall programs much more cleanly,
either. Well, okay — they might. A third-party uninstaller might help
you delete a few extra tiny files or registry entries when you uninstall
an application, but that has no effect at all on your computer’s
performance. You may rarely need an uninstaller to clean up a program
that refuses to uninstall properly, but that’s different.
These are all just types of fiddly system tools that exist only to take
your money. Take all the money you’d put toward these utilities and buy
an SSD or another real hardware upgrade for your computer — you’ll get
an actual performance boost. Sure, you can find free versions of many of
these tools, but they’ll just waste your time — with the exception of a
tool that helps delete temporary files to free up space. But that’s all
you might need, not even a full “PC cleaner.”
Of course, there are more PC myths out there. It’s not just about PCs
either — everything technology-related, from smartphones to other types
of hardware have their own myths. We may not be throwing salt over our
shoulders, but most of us probably believe at least a few myths that
just aren’t accurate.
Image Credit: Meme Binge on Flickr, Blake Patterson on Flickr, li kelly
on Flickr
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David Goldfield,
Assistive Technology Specialist
Feel free to visit my Web site
www.davidgoldfield.info