Tech advice has a long shelf life. A tip that was true in 2004 gets passed from parent to child to coworker, and twenty years later people are still draining their batteries on purpose. Here are eleven beliefs that deserve to retire.
1. “An i7 is always faster than an i5”
Reality: only inside the same generation and the same power class. A recent Core i5 will comfortably beat a Core i7 from five years ago, and a high-performance “H” i5 can beat a low-power “U” i7 from the same year. The name on the sticker is a tier, not a speed. See our guide to CPU names for how to read the rest.
2. “Let the battery run to zero before you charge it”
Reality: this was good advice for the nickel-based batteries of the 1990s, which lost capacity if you topped them up. Lithium-ion batteries are the opposite. They’re happiest between about 20% and 80%, and deep drains wear them faster.
3. “Leaving it plugged in will ruin the battery”
Reality: your laptop stops charging when it’s full, so you can’t “overcharge” it. What does wear a battery is sitting at 100% in a warm laptop for months. Most brands now include a setting that caps the charge at around 80% for exactly this reason. Turn it on if your laptop lives on a desk. There’s more in our battery Q&A.
4. “Macs don’t get viruses”
Reality: Macs get less malware than Windows PCs, partly because of good built-in protections and partly because there are fewer of them to target. Less is not none. Fake installers, malicious browser extensions and phishing pages work on every system.
5. “You need to pay for antivirus”
Reality: the security software built into Windows is good enough for most people, and it’s free. Keeping your system and browser updated, and not installing things from pop-ups, does more for your safety than a paid subscription. If a new laptop nags you to renew a trial, you can uninstall it.
6. “Higher resolution is always better”
Reality: on a 14-inch screen, most people can’t see the difference between a sharp 2.5K panel and a 4K one from a normal distance. The battery can. Pushing more pixels takes more power, and 4K laptops often lose an hour or more of runtime. Brightness and color quality matter more to how a screen looks.
7. “Gaming laptops are only for gamers”
Reality: a gaming laptop is a fast processor, a strong graphics card and good cooling. That’s also what video editors, 3D artists, engineers and data students need. The trade-offs are weight, noise and battery life, not the word “gaming”.
8. “Refurbished means it was broken”
Reality: a lot of refurbished stock is returned inside the return window, used as a display model or came off a business lease. A good refurbisher tests it, replaces worn parts and gives you a warranty. We covered what to look for in Are Refurbished Laptops Worth It?
9. “Shut it down every night or it’ll wear out”
Reality: sleep mode exists so you don’t have to. Closing the lid uses very little power and does no harm. What does help is a proper restart every week or so, which clears out stuck processes and finishes updates.
10. “A magnet will wipe your laptop”
Reality: it took a very strong magnet to damage even an old spinning hard drive. Solid-state drives store data electrically, so household magnets do nothing to them. Your laptop already has magnets inside it, in the speakers and often in the lid sensor.
11. “Incognito mode makes you anonymous”
Reality: private browsing stops your own browser from saving history and cookies. That’s all. Your internet provider, your employer’s network and the sites you visit can still see what you’re doing.
Why myths stick
Most of these were true once, or true for a different product. Batteries changed chemistry. Drives lost their moving parts. Chip names stopped meaning what they used to. When advice doesn’t come with a reason, it’s worth asking how old it is.
If you want more of the truth behind the sticker, try How to Read a Laptop Spec Sheet or our lighter translation guide to laptop marketing.
More reading: all Dealmania articles