5 Tech Misconceptions People Adamantly Believe

I’ve done a lot of troubleshooting, fielded a lot of tech questions and generally helped a lot of people with their IT issues. I am the go to tech guy for a large number of people. I’m that nephew that installed AOL on your first computer, you know who I’m talking about. I’ve heard and seen a lot of obscure,obscure and down right wrong practices in tech.  Here are 5 general tech misconceptions the less techy crowd still think are good savvy ideas.

1.I Heard, If I Remove the Battery From my Laptop When it’s Plugged in it Will Extend my Batteries Life.

Wrong. Laptop batteries vary in their composition but they are all chemical based. Meaning, the atoms inside a given battery are manipulated to produce electrons and the chemicals in the reaction (oxidize) and decay over time. Something a bit similar happens in our own bodies and why anti-oxidants help us live longer. Energy has a price; but these reactions occur whether a battery is in use or sitting on a shelf.

Try it this way, who ages better the person that stays active and exercises daily or the tech blogger sitting at his computer all day not moving? The stationary blogger will age much quicker.

2. All I know is Closing Unused Apps on Your iPhone will Make it Faster.

Again Wrong. If you own an iPhone, you’ve probably heard the myth that closing down all of your open iOS apps will save battery life And free up memory to run faster.

It’s a great way to shutdown a malfunctioning or crashed app. But the myth that it’ll help to eke-out a few more hours battery life is completely false.

Not only is force quitting your apps in this manner unnecessary, it’s actually detrimental. Apps in the background are effectively “frozen”, severely limiting what they can do in the background and freeing up the RAM they were using. iOS is really, really good at this.is so good at this that unfreezing a frozen app takes up way less CPU (and energy) than relaunching an app that had been force quit. Not only does force quitting your apps not help, it actually hurts. So in short if it’s not malfunctioning don’t worry about it.

3. No, Don’t Charge your Phone Battry till It’s at Zero

The idea that you should always completely discharge a battery before charging it up again has legitimate origins, but it doesn’t apply to current technology. Years ago, when nickel–metal hydride (NiMH) and nickel-cadmium (NiCad) batteries were common, they suffered from an issue called battry memory: Unless the battery was completely spent before being recharged, it would “remember” how much power it had used and only charge back up that amount. If done repeatedly over time, the battery would never charge totally again.

The lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery that’s probably in your phone or laptop right now doesn’t suffer from this issue. They have a limited number of charge “cycles”before batteries start to hold less overall power. Ideally charge your devices from time to time before they fully die.

4.The Updates are just a way to make my phone Crash so I have to get a new one

Just before the latest and greatest phone comes out, your phone suddenly starts running slowly. Maybe it starts freezing, or the apps you use get sluggish. Either way, if you can relate, you can probably also understand the common feeling that this is all a plan by tech companies to force you into upgrading.False

Its a common Tech misconceptions, It’s not some corporate trick to force you into the newest tech, or trap you on the consumerist treadmill. As those new phones are released, they come with more memory, better screens, faster processors. Then developers start building their apps around them. When they do, they optimize their apps for the newer devices. So as apps are updated to make use of all of the features on those new devices, they seem to slow down on older phones.

5. Karen Told me, off-brand ink cartridges voids the warranty on your printer

Knock it off Karen. Untrue. Branded ink cartridges are expensive so people often use off-brand cartridges to keep their printing costs down. Fortunately, despite the myth, There is no chance of voiding any warranty on your printer by using off brand cartridges. But then again, third-party tampering isn’t covered in the event of gunshot wounds to your printer either. Most all the problems that printers are likely to have are still covered just fine under the warranty.

The Final Thought on Tech Misconseptions

we could go on an on about Tech misconceptions and you are probably guilty of believing or even perpetuating some of these. Don’t be the Karen’s of the world and give it just a little more thought. Tune in next time when we talk about de fragging memory and airport x ray machines. I may just turn this in to a regular colum