ALLOWING YOUR BATTERIES
TO DRAIN COMPLETELY
BEFORE CHARGING THEM
INCREASES THEIR LONGEVITYAnother myth that refuses to die comes
straight from the far-off land of Nickel
Cadmium. NiCad batteries had a nasty
little flaw called the “memory effect.” When
these older rechargeable batteries weren’t
fully discharged between charge cycles, the
battery “remembered” the shortened cycle,
and thus its total capacity was reduced. If
you ever bought a cordless Dust Buster
and placed it back in the charger base a few
seconds after sucking up a piece of lint, you
quickly learned what memory effect was all
about—even the most diligent dischargers
quickly lost battery capacity.
Today, however, most batteries for
advanced devices—like laptops and cell
phones—are made with Lithium Ion, which
has greater immunity to the memory effect
besides being more powerful and light-
weight. But Lithium Ion batteries aren’t
invincible; they can suffer from power leak-
age when not being used.$%"5.+%$
LEAVING YOUR MONITOR ON
24/7 WASTES ENERGY
Technically speaking, leaving any powered
device on consumes energy in some form.
But monitors with the EPA’s Energy Star
certification offer a power-down feature that
saves energy when your monitor stands
idle for some time. A monitor set to con-
serve power can drop to 15 watts and then
down to 8 watts depending on how long it
is left undisturbed.
According to the EPA, if every U.S.
monitor used the Energy Star power-
down mode, the amount of energy
conserved would translate to 11 billion
kilowatt hours, or roughly $935 million
per year saved. That’s enough energy to
power more than one million households
for a year. Unfortunately, most moni-
tors don’t ship with power management
turned on. You can learn more about this
setting from the Energy Star’s web site:
http://www.energystar.gov , or take it a step further
and get a flat panel LCD (with power
management enabled, of course), which
uses even less power than a CRT."%,)%6% )4
YOU CAN MAKE YOURSELF
INVISIBLE TO THE RIAA ON
FILE SHARING NETWORKS
A recent wave of RIAA crackdowns has
caused panic among casual music down-
loaders, and driven hardcore file-sharing
junkies to new anonymous file-sharing
networks. But is it really possible to be
safe from prying eyes? From what we can
see, technology may solve some prob-
lems, but it’s pretty much a safe bet that
if the RIAA wants to track you down, they
still can.
Three new attempts are underway
to make file-sharing identities anony-
mous. Blubster.com , EarthStation5.com , and
Filetopia.com networks use a variety of IP
cloaking techniques, third-party proxies,
and advanced encryption. But the effect is
more like throwing obstacles in the way
rather than actually creating a truly fool-
proof solution. It still doesn’t prevent the
RIAA from suing everyone on the network
or getting the ISP to cough up the names.
According to Optisoft, creator of
Blubster, its new network will offer two
layers of camouflage. “Each user has
multiple Internet protocol (IP) addresses to
mask themselves,” a spokeperson claimed.
”Files in the network are disguised to look
entirely generic to the outside observer.
The multiple IP addresses are taken from
other users on the network and distort
individual activities.”
The odds of getting caught certainly
decrease when you move to a more
cloaked solution and millions of people
are involved, but in true technical terms,
you can run but can’t hide when it comes
to anonymous file downloading.
Oh, and did we mention that down-
loading or sharing copyrighted songs you
don’t own is illegal?$%"5.+%$
DEFRAGGING YOUR RAM
IMPROVES PERFORMANCE
As the old saying goes, there’s RAM and
then there’s RAM. OK, so we made this
saying up. Our point is this: While it’s true
that defragging your hard drive can help
with performance, defragging your memo-
ry is a sucker’s game.
There are all sorts of white papers you
can read on memory addressing holes,
page file swapping, and so on, but we
like this plain and simple explanation:
Hard drive speed is measured in mil-
liseconds, while memory is measured in
nanoseconds—essentially a 6x differencein magnitude. If you defrag a hard drive
and it saves you a second or two each
time you access a file, you should notice
the improvement. A memory defragging
utility (which also uses precious system
memory, by the way) might get you 1,000
nanoseconds extra, or one millionth of a
second , which you will never notice.$%"5.+%$
OVERCLOCKING YOUR PC
CAN SHORTEN THE LIFE SPAN
OF YOUR SYSTEM
This one is true, but only for the clueless.
Overclocking is the task that separates
alpha geeks from fumbling amateurs.
For starters, incorrectly overclocking your
system can not only fry the CPU and crash
your hard drive, it can also heat the inside
of your case to unheard of temperatures,
and make everything from memory to
add-in cards instantly lose their warranty
protection. In other words, don’t try call-
ing Dell after you’ve melted your new
Dimension.
The lure of overclocking stems from
the fact that CPUs are not manufactured
in predetermined clock speeds. The chips
are simply tested and given a speed rat-
ing based on a theoretical assumption
about how much performance each CPU
is capable of delivering reliably. The key
word here is “reliably.” One man’s reli-
able is another man’s wasted horsepower.
Overclockers are willing to roll the dice
and gamble on the fact that if cooled prop-
erly and housed in the right motherboard,
most CPUs can provide extra performance
for basically no charge.
The downside is that increasing voltage
and amping up the PCI and AGP buses on
the motherboard can do all sorts of dam-
age to the components in your system.
Older Maxtor drives, for example, are
known for being unable to run above a
33MHz PCI bus. For this reason, we recom-
mend that overclockers do their research.
We also understand that while blowing
out a system sucks, the pursuit is noble."%,)%6% )4
INTERNET SPEED BOOSTERS
INCREASE THE SPEED OF YOUR
INTERNET CONNECTION
Once upon a time, modems doubled
in speed every few years. This made
Internet connections something youBEFORE CHARGING THEM
INCREASES THEIR LONGEVITYAnother myth that refuses to die comes
straight from the far-off land of NickelLEAVING YOUR MONITOR ON
24/7 WASTES ENERGY
Technically speaking, leaving any powered
device on consumes energy in some form.INVISIBLE TO THE RIAA ON
FILE SHARING NETWORKS
A recent wave of RIAA crackdowns has
caused panic among casual music down-DEFRAGGING YOUR RAM
IMPROVES PERFORMANCE
As the old saying goes, there’s RAM and
then there’s RAM. OK, so we made this
saying up. Our point is this: While it’s trueOVERCLOCKING YOUR PC
CAN SHORTEN THE LIFE SPAN
OF YOUR SYSTEM
This one is true, but only for the clueless.INCREASE THE SPEED OF YOUR
INTERNET CONNECTION
Once upon a time, modems doubled
in speed every few years. This made44 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004