PC myths: the truth

Posted on 14 Jul 2008 at 15:02

 

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Alert messages in the Japanese version of Windows are haikus
Credibility rating 0/10
Origin Internet rumour

It may be untrue, but we love the idea of stylish, simple error messages - if only because real Windows errors are usually so enigmatic.

"Out of memory/ We wish to hold the whole sky/ but we never will," is much more inspiring than Microsoft's original. "Having been erased/ the document you're seeking/ must now be retyped." is far less patronising than "Any unsaved data will be lost".

However, the classically formed poems were actually penned for a 1998 competition in Salon magazine. The verses leaked on to the internet and spread as gospel.

Magnets will kill your data
Credibility rating 6/10
Origin Common-sense legacy from the floppy disk era

Data on old-style floppy disks and modern hard disks are stored by applying a magnetic field to magnetic material. The drive's read/write heads detect whether an area of the disk is positive or negative, and process the information appropriately - most of the time, at least. When another magnet crashes the party, it can leave a trail of data destruction.

That's the theory. However, storage has come a long way since the age of the floppy disk, which had no protection from external magnets. Close contact with magnets has corrupted many a file. However, experts say that we no longer need to fear that phone, speaker or fridge magnets will erase our data.

USB drives are virtually impervious to magnetic damage because they use Flash memory, which uses electrical current rather than magnetism to change the state of bits.

Airport security scanners and high-powered electromagnets designed to wipe classified data cannot wipe the data from a modern USB memory stick and so they pose no threat. Optical drives are resilient, too, their weaknesses being UV light and scratches.

Hard disks, however, rely on magnetic storage, and opinion on the risk of losing data is split. On the one hand, industry figures say data stored on platters inside computers and MP3 players is safe from magnets because they are well shielded. "You'd have to be using something quite powerful, and actually doing it on purpose, to foul up data," says Ian Rainsford, Verbatim's technical marketing manager. "You could do some damage, but you'd need to try hard or be unlucky." Not to mention the fact that plenty of other magnets reside harmlessly inside the average computer - even in the hard disk.

Nevertheless, the web is littered with tales of woe from people who've lost data having been near magnets. Coincidence? Perhaps. Was your correspondent confident enough to try sticking a magnet to his laptop the day before deadline? No.

Monitors will give us brain tumours
Credibility rating 5/10
Origin Scientific research inflated by opportunist manufacturers

Here are the known facts. Computer screens, particularly old cathode-ray tube (CRT) models, give off electromagnetic radiation, X-rays and other nasties. Second, people who use computers have suffered from cancer and other debilitating diseases. Whether or not these two facts are linked is a debate that has lasted 20 years.

A Californian health organisation study got the ball rolling by claiming a link between heavy CRT use and miscarriages and birth defects. However, the UK's National Radiological Protection Board's believes "electromagnetic fields are not cancer-causing, but may promote the growth of previously initiated tumours".