static?..... what static?

[totalwise]

You know the feeling, you've just bought a new part for your pc, you've read the all to familiar static warnings on the packaging lables. So you take extra precaution, you touch the radiator every few minutes, you touch the metal part of your atx case a few times as well, you make sure you have no static on you then you get stuck in.

You care full remove the old component (i.e. a cpu), once it's off the mobo you manhandle it, holding it casually, across the middle, on the pins etc, then you throw it on the carpet, then you carefully take the new cpu out of the packet, after carefully discharging your body through the radiator, you hold it by the edges, making absolutely minimum contact, and get fired up.

Then you put the old cpu on a plastic bag, wrap it up with a jiffybag, sell it on ebay, and before you know it you've got another fantastic ebay feedback! saying how fast the delivery was, how carefully the item was wrapped and how perfectly it worked with their system.

This hasn't just happened once but MAAAAAAANY TIMES, with every component I've upgraded, even RAM's which are paticularly sensative to static, it seems every time the components work fine, once i've even stepped on my pci modem accidently, i just straightened out the little cylinder type thing on the board, put them in a jiffy envelope, with the driver cd (no manual, no box), sold them on ebay and people still managed to get it working fine without any problems.

Which begs the question, are electrical companies just going OTT wiuth this static warnings, because so far I've never messed up any of my equipment through static build up.

[Paragon]

Much of the warnings are overkill; but it can happen, a couple of factors control how bad it is:

1. Time of the year; winter is much worse than summer

2. Whether you have carpet or not, and the elements the carpet consists of with more nylon content comes a higher risk of static discharge.

3. Humidity level, the lower the humidity the worse the conditions are.

4. The next factor is probably the weirdest of all and that's the human factor; some individuals conduct static electricity much more readily than others...some say it's their sodium (salt) content; but I've never seen a study yet that relates the two.

I've known people that conduct static electricity so well that they not only wear an anti-stat strap but also rubber gloves and rubber shoe coverings when working on electronic components. I guess it's better safe than sorry...I work in the health care industry where static electricity can play a major role in compromising the readings on some of our equipment so because of our low humidity environment and the cooler temperatures, especially in the operating room, most equipment is equipped with a static ground to prevent discharge...I also participated a few years ago in a study where we examined this very subject, just not on computer parts.