23 IT Triva for Noobs
1. A portable external hard disk is actually a laptop internal hard disk with a casing and USB bridge.
2. Your computer is hot: You hard disk can reach 60C, your CPU 80C and graphics card 120C.
3. USB2.0 has bus speed of 480Mbps, or 60MBps, but very few common USB devices can actually reach even half that speed in practise. (So stop yapping about that USB 3.0 port! Maybe 1 or 2 years later, not now)
4. It is futile to install more than 4GB of RAM + graphics memory on a 32-bit system operating system, be it Mac or Windows. But it is becoming more common for computers to be shipped with 64-bit OS recently. Also, windows XP can only allocated 2GB of memory max for any running application.
5. You cannot put a single file larger than 4GB in a common thumbdrive or external portable hard disk because of FAT32 limitation. You can, however, reformat it to NTFS or HFS+.
6. Internal memory card readers that you find on desktops and laptops are also connected to an internal USB, there are alot of misconceptions that internal card reader are faster than external ones.
7. The common MSN Messenger we used is just a client running MSN’s chat protocol. There are alot of other software that can run MSN’s chat protocol too. If MSN Messenger fails you, you can try using another client tt support MSN’s chat protocol.
8. Whenever you convert an audio file (e.g. mp3 to wma), the converted file will definitely sound poorer, even if you set it to a higher bit rate than the original. This does not apply to lossless audio like Apple Lossless or FLAC. Just imagine taking photo of a photo on your monitor, then taking a photo of the photo you took of the photo you have taken. It only gets worst.
9. “avi”, “wmv” and “mov” are NOT video file formats. They are called containers. Containers are use to bind video and audio and other misc. data together into one file. Common file format for avi is DIVX, for wmv is VC-1 and mov is MJPEG. One container can take more than one video or audio formats.
10. A small monitor can have the same resolution (total number of pixels) as a big LCD TV. When the screen size becomes bigger for the same resolution, the PPI (Pixel per inch, or pixel density) decreases. That is why if you go near a big LCD TV, you can sometimes see each individual pixel. When you buy a big LCD TV, you are just paying for a larger panel. Try sitting closer next time. The clarity is the same.
11. When it comes to memory, a small ‘b’ denotes “bits” and a big ‘B’ means “bytes”, there are 8bits in a byte, so a 8Mbps internet download speed is actually only 1megabytes per second.
12. There is no such thing as 7GB thumbdrive.
13. Windows has more virus only because more people uses it. As a virus writer, would you target an operating system that only 5% of the population use, or would you target one used by 70+% of the population? As the popularity of OSX grows, so will the virus. However, most virus labs DO NOT have anti-virus solution for OSX. You are warned.
14. MP3 players are not invented by Apple. Mult-touch gestures are not invented by Apple.
15. BSOD is to a mechanism by Windows to protect your system from hardware problems. When you see a BSOD, it is either due to your hardware or drivers, not windows Windows does not cause BSOD by itself. Its just like you blacking out when had a terrible accident.
16. Because OSX is so inflexible that it can OFFICIALLY only run on a limited set of hardware (only Apple comps), you won’t see hardware issues. Windows has to work on the million of hardware and brand configurations that anyone throws at it.
17. HTML is not programming.
18. Designing a website is not writing an essay. It is a tedious process that requires good graphic design sense and skills, as well as knowledge of client side langauges, html, css, and also server site languages, such as php, aspx, jsp and java servlets etc.
19. DSLR does not automatically allows you to take better photos. DSLR only allows more flexibility for taking photos. Ultimately, whether the photo is good or not is up to the photographer. If you are considering upgrading to DSLR because you think that that your photo is not nice, and don’t know what ISO, apecture, shutter speed, F-number etc is, forget it, you are only going to make things worst and sell your DSLR 1 week later.
20. Creative Xi-Fi in usb dongles and MP3 player is not a hardware solution. All the processing took place in software in its driver.
21. New iPhones come out every June/July, iPods every Sep, and Macbooks every March. Stop buying new iPhones in May, iPod in August, and Macbooks in Feb. The new models won’t be more expensive than the old one. In fact, from 2 years ago, the new models every year are priced lower than launch price of the previous year model.
i.e. 2008 iPod Touch 16GB sells at $498, 2009 iPod Touch 32GB sells at $468 with twice the RAM and better processor.
22. If you think you have a good IT-related business idea and want to hire some “programmers” to do it for you, then ask yourself, why didn’t the programmers themselves did it already. Especially when there are many programmers with business knowledge, but very few business people who can tell the differences between CD and a DVD.
23. A computer virus cannot infect a human.
Adapted and expended from Cygig’s fb post.
1 comment
Please stop using FAT32…