The internet is a great medium for getting information and help on all sorts of subjects.  Many people have a lot of specialized knowledge in one field, so they can give out lots of good advice in that area of expertise.  Of course, once in a while you get someone who doesn’t know their stuff chiming in with incorrect advice.  Usually this type of person is set straight very quickly, but once in a while the incorrect advice sticks, and people give it out to others.  Once in a while, it even becomes the conventional “wisdom” on a subject.  This article is meant to dispel some of these misconceptions, at least those in the computer field. 

Myth 1:  The fastest, most expensive processor is the best
Many people, when they’re looking for a system, will make a beeline straight to the Athlon 64 FX or the Pentium Extreme Edition.  They figure, faster is better.  Yes, faster can be better, but in reality it’s usually not cost-effective, and often people don’t need such a great processor. 

Take the Pentium 4.  It’s available in speeds up to 3.8 GHz, but my old 2.8 GHz system ran as fast as I needed it to, and when you compare the cost of a P4 2.8 GHz ($160) and a P4 3.8 GHz ($600), it’s just not worth it to buy the faster one.  Furthermore, a 2.4 GHz Athlon 64 will match the performance of the 3.8 GHz P4, and the Pentium-M will also perform well despite having a maximum speed of 2.26 GHz.

But why even get a Pentium 4, Athlon 64, or Pentium-M in the first place?  If you’re running office and internet applications, a 1 GHz PIII will work just fine; even if you’re watching DVDs or ripping MP3s, you don’t even need the aforementioned 2.8 GHz P4.  A Sempron 64 will offer most of the benefits of the Athlon 64, but at slightly lower performance.  A mid-range Celeron-D will be fast enough for all but gamers and content producers.  And the only benefit the Pentium-M has over the Celeron-M is SpeedStep technology, so if you’re not going to be using your laptop on battery much, then just get the Celeron-M.

Myth 2:  You need a good video card to watch DVDs and edit images
For some reason, there’s a stigma against integrated graphics and low-end discrete cards.  So many people get better cards because they think they need them for everyday tasks like image editing and movie watching.  They don’t.  The only reason you need a good card is if you play games, render video or animation, or do CAD/CAM work.  Up to a point, you will get somewhat of a performance boost in other multimedia apps from a card with more video RAM, but anything more than about 64 MB of video RAM is not really necessary.

Of course, the converse also applies – you need a good video card to play games.  If you’re buying a new motherboard or pre-built system, make sure it at least has an AGP or PCI-Express x16 slot so you can upgrade the graphics.  Low-end systems like the Dell Dimension 3000 aren’t any good for gaming, because they have no slot to add a dedicated graphics card.

Myth 3:  Microsoft doesn’t know the first thing about how to secure their products
Everyone sees the daily articles about Microsoft’s Windows vulnerability du jour.  So a lot of people say that Linux and the MacOS are more secure.  People also believe Firefox is more secure than Internet Explorer.

Not true.  According to ZDNet, a study by the US government found that in 2005, “out of 5,198 reported vulnerabilities, 812 were Windows operating system vulnerabilities, while 2,328 were Unix/Linux operating vulnerabilities. 2,058 were multiple operating system vulnerabilities.”  Granted, Unix/Linux includes multiple flavors of Linux as well as FreeBSD/MacOS, and the analysis did not separate those out.  But even so, the real reason there are fewer attacks on alternative operating systems and browsers than on Microsoft’s is that many more people use Microsoft’s products.  Expect to see holes in Firefox and Linux/Unix become exploited more as the alternative products gain market share.

Another related misconception is that things like the Service Pack 2 firewall and Microsoft AntiSpyware aren’t any good, just because they have the Microsoft name on them.  In reality, the SP2 firewall uses the advanced Stateful Packet Inspection technology that other firewalls like ZoneAlarm and Sygate use, and Microsoft AntiSpyware is one of the best scanners in the business.

Myth 4:  RAID and SATA will automatically mean I’ll get better performance
I’m sure you’ve seen the new Serial ATA hard drives and said, “Wow, I really want one of those.”  Maybe you bought one, justifying the upgrade because Serial ATA runs at 150 or even 300 MB/second, whereas regular IDE only runs at 100 or 133 MB/second.  The problem is that those are the theoretical maximums, but no drive will reach those speeds.  Drives’ burst rates are almost up to 133 MB/second, and some high-end ones have even higher burst rates, but the most important spec, the sustained transfer rate (the maximum speed at which the drive can read data) is only at about 60 MB/second.  Real-life speeds will be even lower because data may be fragmented and so the drive will have to look for it on different parts of the drive, slowing transfer speeds down.

RAID 0 is another boondoggle.  Many gamers get two drives and hook them up in RAID to get better performance.  The problem is that the only times the drives are accessed in games are during loading sequences – and those are CPU-limited.  Since RAID uses the CPU more than a single hard drive, game load times will actually be slower using RAID than using a single drive in some games.

On top of that, RAID is terrible for data security – if one drive on the array fails, you lose all your data.  One drive is much safer (although you should back up your data either way, which most people don’t do).

Those are all the myths and misconceptions I can cover for the moment, but you may see another installment in a few weeks’ time.  I hope you enjoyed this one!

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