There’s no other major item most of us own that is as confusing, unpredictable and unreliable as our personal computers. Everybody has questions about them, and we aim to help.

Here are a few questions about computers I’ve received recently from society like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.

My computer takes forever to start up. I am tempted to just put it into hibernation or standby when I am done with it for the day, so that starting up will be quicker. Would I be damaging my computer by doing so?

Doing that shouldn’t cause any damage to your computer. For many users, one of these two techniques is standard procedure, in fact. Standby, or sleep, mode, gets you back to work more quickly, considering the machine never completely shuts down. Its biggest downside is that, on occasion, computers fail to “awaken” properly from that mode, and you have to do a full restart. So I would advise that you carefully save any work before initiating standby.

In my experience, that kind of glitch is less likely to happen when you use hibernation, in which the computer does completely shut down, but first saves to the hard disk a record of the state of the machine.

When the computer restarts, all open programs and files are restored just as you left them. The downside here is that getting going again using hibernation takes longer than it does using standby mode. And, even though it’s more dependable

than standby mode, I’d still advise saving all your work each moment before using hibernation.

I am thinking about switching to a MacBook Pro laptop. I understand that it has a real good motorized Wi-Fi detection system. But whether I additionally use a cellular modem card from Verizon or Sprint to access the World Wide Web, won’t the two clash?

No. The Mac operating system treats the two kinds of connections separately, each with its own user interface. It can detect and connect either one, whether you have coverage of both types.

I’m interested in getting a laptop with LED display and SSD drive. Do you think the price for those components will fall drastically in three months’ date?

Displays that use light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have been around for awhile and don’t tend to be a major deal breaker in the higher-end laptops in which they are commonly offered. But solid state drives (SSDs), which replace hard disks with memory chips to store your input, are much rarer and newer and still can add significantly to the price of even a high-end laptop. I am no expert in price forecasting, but, while SSD prices will fall, I doubt they will drop “drastically” in as little as three months.

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Orginal post by Walter S. Mossberg