PART - 1: Computers and their misconceptions.

Hi Fellas,

I am back with another article. This article deals with general concepts in computer world. During interviews in  my engineering days, I was asked this question, "how much time would you take to develop a technology completely?", and I answered that I'd take 1 year to develop a technology. Actually I didn't know that 1 year is very less time period in IT field and interviewers fired another question to me, "is it possible to develop a technology within that short period of time?". I was taken aback, but maintained my coolness and replied that ma'am, if I get a team which comprises of technologically sound persons, then I'd be able to develop a technology completely within an year. I guess that my interviewers weren't happy with my answer. 

That incident happened some 7 months ago and I came across several people who were computer illiterates.  Some of them didn't know the basic keyboard shortcuts like ctrl+C, ctrl+V, ctrl+Z, ctrl+X, ctrl+Y, windows+L and many more. I know that it would be silly to call people computer illiterates for that reason. But I was surprised when I spoke with them about computers. Some of them even told that MS office is like a company (I think that the word 'Office' confused them). Well, I tried explaining them about computers, and I guess that it didn't work well. 

Here are the common misconceptions about computers.

1. Some people think a computer processor’s clock speed is the arbitrary deciding factor of its capabilities. They think that 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 is more powerful than a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo.
2. People say that RAM is 500 GB or 1 TB when they are asked that how much RAM they have.
3. People say that HDD is 4 GB in size when they are asked that how big is their HDD.
4. Some people think that pop-up ads are genuine and they click on those ads and install malwares, trojan-horses in their system without their knowledge. Believe me, guys. Even I did that mistake.
5. When the computer is too slow, people blame it on viruses. 
6. People think that their system won't be affected because they have an anti-virus. 
7. Some people use the word 'download' instead of 'install', it would be weird to hear that people downloaded a software from CDs.
8. People think the terms “megabytes” and “megabits” are the same thing and use each term interchangeably. Megabits is used to measure transfer speed while megabytes is used to measure storage capacity.
9. People always think that their wi-fi is the most secure connection they have. 
10. When people discover their computer’s maximum RAM capacity is 4 GB or more and ask to upgrade even though they’re running a 32-bit version of Windows.

There are millions of misconceptions like this. I can't cover all those in my article. Here are my explanations to above misconceptions.

• Dear people, processor's clock speed is not the arbitrary deciding factor of its capabilities. Pentium 4 is much older than core 2 duo and core 2 duo has many features like managing multiple threads, managing multiple processes, their child processes. The Pentium 4 CPU having clock speed of 3.2 GHz is never fast than core 2 duo CPU having clock speed of 2.4 GHz. 
• RAM and HDD are entirely different. RAM stands for Random Access Memory which is used again and again, and HDD is like permanent storage device which stands for Hard Disk Drive. The data deleted in HDD can never be recovered back. Ofcourse, there are powerful linux data recovery tools, however they are able to recover back 60%-70% of the deleted data. RAM can never be big and huge than HDD. 
• Never trust those pop-up ads. Normally they are ads like "software which can speed up your computer". If you download it, a tool bar will be downloaded which will collect all user cookies and will send it to the developer who developed that tool bar and your personal info is more more private. And yeah, these malwares, trojan horses are pretty dangerous. They call crawl through out the system, can eat memory, can slow down the system, delete some files on their own which may result in operating system break down. Of course, this reminds me of vulnerable windows operating system.
• Never blame everything on viruses. Viruses stand for 'Vital Information Resources Under Siege' which means that they rob the data stored in your systems and they rarely break-down the system. malwares, trojan-horses are the main reasons for system slow down. 
• The stuff that you get from internet is called as downloaded stuff. For example, the browsers download the web pages and allow users to view those web pages. Whenever you move the data from CD to your system, it means that you are copying the data to to your system. Installing a file means that you are running a executable file in your system to setup a software.
• 1 bit =0.125 bytes or 8 bits = 1 byte, I think that it should clear the doubts about megabits and megabytes. 
• Never assume that your wi-fi connection is 100% secure. Don't forget to study algorithms like war-driving and GPU brute-force hacking. And it is needless to say that brute-force algorithm is regarded as a successful algorithm by many programmers and hackers. 
• 32-bit Windows will recognize up to 3.72 GB RAM while 64-bit Windows will recognize up to 192 GB RAM.

All these are based on my experience. It is difficult to educate everybody in India about computers, but I want people to abandon their myths about computers. I will be happy if my article reaches many people. My next part will contain details about hacking and its misconceptions.

P.S: This is a non-linux article and I hope that aam aadmi will be able to understand my simple English.