Not all modern people are keeping pace with the technology progress. And it causes appearance a lot of questions that give birth to the numerous myths. We gathered biggest technology myths and explained whether they are fiction or not.

1. 64-bit OS calculates twice faster than 32-bit OS

In fact, you need a 64-bit software running on 64-bit OS. In this case you can use all advantages of 64-bit platform. Using 32-bit software on a 64-bit OS does not give any benefits in performance.

2. You can damage your PC when switching off power without shutting down computer.

This is old myth, that you can damage your hard drive when shutting down computer by pressing power button. The only damage you can make is loosing your unsaved data. This is a common truth – save your changes often. And in that case don’t be paranoid, press reset button if your PC hangs.

3. Use ‘Safely Remove hardware’ drill every time you want to unplug USB device

This is a myth with little exceptions. The general idea is to be sure that you will not unplug USB device during data transfer. In this case you can suffer data loss. But if the device is idle there is no any need to use ‘Safely Remove hardware’ feature. Regarding about exceptions above, if you have set USB Flash as a Ready Boost device in Windows Vista, you have to safely stop it before unplugging. For other devices like mouse, keyboard, scanner, printer you can just unplug them if you are sure they are not in use.

4. Formatting and partitioning can cause physical wear of the hard drive.

Firstly, let us look into the formatting process. When you format the hard drive special software writes data in multiple patterns and then fills the entire partition with ‘0’s. This sequence of actions does not differ from a usual write operations, like copying files. During the partitioning process, the starting sectors of the hard drive are also modified to make changes in partition table. But for the hard drive this just another write operation. “Quick format” option is even less strained, because only file table is modified.

5. Remove files from recycle bin for permanently deletion.

This is absolutely not true. Deleting files from the recycle bin is not actually erasing them from PC. Operating system just marked them as empty. And it means another data can be written above them. However, while these ‘empty’ files are not overwritten, special software can easily recover them. Recovering even possible if data are overwritten, but it is much harder and more expensive.

Digital Printing becomes very popular. However, there are still a lot of misinformation regarding its quality, cost, special paper etc. Let us go trough the common myths about digital printing and find the truth.

Myth 1. Digital printing is too expensive.

Fact: Digital printing is not a low cost technology, but very affordable if project’s total costs are considered. If we talk about a unit cost, price for digital printing is definitely higher compared that of offset, for short-run printing especially. But, total project cost is likely to be lower than offset printing.

Myth 2. Digital printing is not a well-grounded.

Fact: Digital printing changed the rules of the commercial and label printing. And now it is doing the same for color book publishing. Color book publishing is a very huge market and traditional book printing is getting hard to handle such volumes. While digital printing makes it easy and economically well-grounded to print very short runs of 10, 20 or 40 books. The process is the very quite easy following: file is uploaded to a front-end workflow that generates a PDF file and a job ticket. This ticket contains all information necessary for printing.

Myth 3. The quality of the digital press printing is not so good as conventional printing.

Fact: researches of the professionals prove this is not necessary true. Let us take HP Indigo, for example. It uses liquid ink technology that allows to get quality close to the conventional printing. One more interesting technology analyses image and text as they’re being printed, and adds dots to fill gaps at the edges, without affecting color stability.

Myth 4. Digital printers are all the same.

Fact: there is a great variety of digital printing technologies and all of them can perform quite differently. We are talking about speed, quality, cost. Mentioned HP Indigo, for example, is actually an offset process with liquid ink.

Myth 5. Digital printing needs expensive special paper.

Fact: it was true when digital printing only appeared and was not widely used. Nowadays, digital printing press can print on a wide range of paper and synthetic stocks.

You always surf the Internet using your desktop computer monitor and after you are prompted to visit a mobile version of the website you expect to find something pretty much the same. I have to disappoint you. And here are 3 main reasons:

Myth 1/3. Mobile version is just a small website.

Imagine someone walking down the street and looking the mobile version of your website. I’m sure you are not going to kill your users, so they have to finish looking the website before steps out into traffic. That is why mobile version of the website need to be more informative, remove all unnecessary graphics and descriptions. The mobile website has to differ, and even may have complimentary role to the website.

Myth 2/3. Mobile design needs to fit all.

Nowadays web designers have to optimize websites to look correctly in dozens of combination of browsers and operations systems. But it is possible and the entire audience is almost covered.

The situation is different with mobile phones. There is no any standard and mobile phones are becoming more differentiated. Website that looks correctly in Nokia N97, looks different in iPhone and looks more different in Blackberry. The variety of mobile devices is so great, that it is impossible to optimize website to identically in all of them.

Myth 3/3. People will not register.

Registration is usually boring procedure and nobody likes it. The situation is more critical with mobile phones. They feel more like a wallet not a computer, it is harder to type characters. That is why registration must be as simple as possible. The acceptable way could be to give membership directly after providing username and password.

As a conclusion I give you a known wisdom: investigate needs of your customers, their behaviour and create solutions that fit these precisely. Mobile web design is not an exception.

In this article we will go through the most common myths about mobile phones. Professionals in the area of mobiles and wireless technology will dispute several well known fictions.

Myth 1/4. Mobile phone can cook an egg.

The myth is that is that if we place an egg between 2 mobile phones and will call on both of them, the egg would be cooked in about 1 hour.

Fact: mobile phones have very low power, about 0.25W maximum, and even if we direct all of this power in the egg, the temperature increase would be very little. Much more lower the required temperature to cook an egg which is about 70 degrees Celcius.

Here ( http://acrbr.org.au/ScienceWeek.aspx?section=Egg ) you can download the video made by the Australian Centre for RF Bioeffects Research (ACRBR) In October 2007 that deflates the myth about the cell phone that can cook an egg.

Myth 2/4. Mobile phone can cook a popcorn.

In May 2008 some video clips appeared on the internet showing that popcorn can be cooked using the electromagnetic energy from several ( three or four ) mobile phones. Such video clips are a just a joke.

Fact: this myth can not be true because several cell phones can’t generate even close amount of RF energy to pop the corn. Here are some calculations:

a) even if we assume that every mobile phone is emitting RF energy at its maximum power of 0.25 W for one minute, totally 1 W from four phones, and all power is absorbed by the popcorn, the temperature increase will be very insignificant and very far from the 190 C needed for cooking popcorn.
b) every one knows that microwave oven needs of about 1000 W cooks popcorn during 30 secs or even a minute. The total power of 4 mobile phones is at least a 1000 times smaller than required.
c) also in all mentioned clips mobile phones just ringing. It is worth nothing, as when mobile phones receive a call they only transmits intermittently until a call is answered.

To summarize: mobile phones can’t be a source of the energy to cook the popcorn.

Myth 3/4. Mobile phone can cause an explosion at a petrol station.

There is periodic media coverage claiming that mobile phones have been involved in explosions at petrol stations, but none of these stories has ever been traced to a real event.

Fact: mobile phones can not be a cause of the petrol stations explosion. There is no any fact that a mobile phone has ever explode the petrol station anywhere in the world according to the UK Institute of Petroleum.

In 1991 Shell UK made researches to assess risks of a radio frequency spark from cell phones and had found that mobile phones did not have a meaningful chance. Much more hazard goes from smoking and striking matches.

Myth 4/4. Mobile phone can attract lightning in a storm.

One of the letters published in the British Medical Journal described an incident where a 15-year old girl was witnessed being struck by lightning. During the incident the girl was using mobile phone in a large park during stormy weather.

Fact: In responce to British Medical Journal the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) made own researches and released result on its website. NOAA DEBUNKING LIGHTNING’S CONNECTION TO CELL PHONES.

“Cell phones, small metal items, jewelry, etc do not attract lightning. Nothing attracts lightning. Lightning tends to strike taller objects,” said John Jensenius, a NOAA National Weather Service lightning expert. “People are struck because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. The wrong place is anywhere outside. The wrong time is anytime a thunderstorm is nearby.”