Computer Definitions

 The Computer Definitions Page Is Currently Under Maintenance. 

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• Adware
  • Adware is any software that displays advertisements on your computer.  Often adware is installed when a user installs free software or sometimes behind the scenes without the users knowledge.

• AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) 
  • AGP is a special slot on a computer motherboard that is used specifically for video cards.  AGP has been standard on PC's since 1998.  Over the years AGP has seen speed boosts of 2x, 4x, and 8x speeds. AGP has now been superseded by PCI Express.

• AMD (Advanced Micro Devices)
  • AMD is a leading manufacturer of PC processors and graphics card processors.  Some of their products include the Athlon, Duron, Opteron, Phenom, and Turion line of processors.  AMD acquired graphics card company ATI Technologies in 2006.  In 2007, the company ranked eleventh among semiconductor manufacturers.

• Anisotropic Filtering  
  • In 3D computer graphics, anisotropic filtering is basically a technique that video cards use to sharpen the details of the fading-away part of a 3D object that recedes into the distance.

• ANSI  (American Nation Standards Institute) 
  • The American National Standards Institute or ANSI is a private nonprofit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organization also coordinates U.S. standards with international standards so that American products can be used worldwide.

• Anti-Aliasing   
  • In 3D computer graphics, anti-aliasing is basically the technique of smoothing the jagged appearance of diagonal lines on a polygonal 3D object.

• Antivirus
  • A computer program used to protect computers from viruses.  Antivirus programs typically include an auto-update feature that enables the program to download profiles of new viruses called virus definition files so that it can check for the new viruses as soon as they are discovered.

• Applet 
  • An applet is a small program that works within another program to carry out a particular task.

• ASCII  (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)
  • ASCII is an early and very basic character encoding method based on the English alphabet.  ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that work with simple text.

• Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL)
  • A method of connecting a computer to the Internet over a regular phone line that produces a much faster data transmission rate over a conventional dial-up modem.  It is asymmetric because it downloads information  from the Internet faster than it uploads information from your computer to the Internet.

• Attachment
  • An attachment is any file attached to an email message.  An attachment can be any type of file such as a picture, program, word processing document, etc.  In fact viruses can also be part of a file attached to an email so it is always wise to scan an attachment with an antivirus program before opening it.

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• Bandwidth
  • Bandwidth is a measure of the total amount of data that can can be transferred over a period of time.   Bandwidth is often referenced when talking about how much data you can send through a network or modem connection and it is usually measured in bits per second (bps).  So for example a modem that works at 57,600 bps has more than double the bandwidth of a modem that works at 14,400 bps.

• BIOS (Basic Input Output System)
  • BIOS is a program built into a PC that is ran when the computer is first powered on. The primary function of the BIOS is to identify and initiate hardware such as hard drives, floppies, etc. This is to prepare the machine so other software programs stored on various media can load, execute, and then take control of the PC.

• bit (Binary Digit) 
  • Binary digits are a basic unit of information storage and communication in digital computing.  A bit is represented by either a  0 or 1 and it is the smallest unit of information on a machine.  8 bits equal one PC byte.

   

• BitTorrent
  • BitTorrent in a nutshell is combination of a few things that allow you to download a file in chunks from multiple computers across the Internet.  On a slightly more technical level, it is a peer-to-peer file sharing communications protocol that distributes file transfers across multiple computers so data bandwidth used by each computer is less and files are transferred faster.    In order to use the BitTorrent protocol, you need a BitTorrent client, which is a software program that accesses the BitTorrent network. The client program allows you to search for files and begin downloading torrents, which are downloads that are in-progress.

• Blog
  • A blog/web log is a website where a person typically documents their thoughts, and many blogs also provide commentary or news on a particular subject.  Entries in blogs are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order and A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic.

• Blue Screen of Death (BSoD)
  • Also known as a stop error or simply a bluescreen, a BSoD  is an error screen displayed by certain operating systems, most notably Microsoft Windows, after encountering a critical system error which can cause the system to shut down to prevent damage. This can be caused by poorly written device drivers, faulty memory, a corrupt Windows registry, and various other reasons.

• Bluetooth
  • Bluetooth is a wireless technology that allows computers and other devices such as cell phones and handheld devices to communicate with each other.

• bmp (Bitmap)
  • A bitmap is a basic type of graphics file in an uncompressed format.  A jpeg (jpg) graphics file for comparison is in a compressed format.

• Boot
  • In computer lingo the word boot usually means start up of a computer until it is ready to be used.  So for example, when someone asks you to reboot your computer they mean restart it completely until it is ready to be used again.  For example, you may be on a tech support call and the technician may ask you to reboot the computer to finish the installation of a piece of software.

• bps  (Bits Per Second )
  • In telecommunications and computing, bits per second represents how many bits of digital data that is transferred in 1 second.  Bits per second is often referred to as a bit rate or data rate.   Often you will see kilo, mega, giga, or tera in front of bps to represent one thousand, one million, one billion, and one trillion bits per second respectively.

   

   

• Broadband
  • Typically the word broadband is used when referring to a high speed Internet connection such as DSL or cable. 

• Browser
  • When you here someone use the word browser, they are usually referring to a program that is used to view Internet Web pages.  Internet Explorer and Firefox are two widely used browsers.

• Buffer
  • A buffer is a temporary storage area for data.  Buffers are used in many aspects of computing and sometimes are referred to as a cache.  For example, a buffer is often used when viewing videos or listening to music over the Internet so there is no interruption in the playback.  The content is loaded into the buffer before the playback begins and played from there.  Another example is the cache memory in a computer processor, used to keep new instructions closer to the processing unit for faster access.

• Burner
  • Often the word burner is used when referring to CD-RW and DVD-RW drives.  Basically any optical drive that gives you the ability to write data onto a media such as a Compact Disc or DVD is a burner.  So if someone asks you to burn them a copy of your CD, they are asking you to create a copy for them.

• Byte
  • A byte is a basic unit of information storage and communication in digital computing.  A byte is equal to 8 digital bits.  Often you will see kilo, mega, giga, or tera in front of byte to represent one thousand, one million, one billion, and one trillion bytes respectively.  For example, my laptop hard drive is 80 gigabytes, that is 80 billion bytes.

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• Cable Modem
  • A cable modem is the physical piece of hardware that connects to a standard television cable connection giving you an always-on high speed Internet connection.  Cable high speed Internet will sometimes just be referred to as cable, so if someone asks you if you have cable or DSL, that is what they are talking about.

• Cache
  • Cache is basically a buffer, an area used to temporarily store frequently or recently used data.   The Temporary Internet Files section of the Internet Explorer web browser for example is a cache, it stores recently accessed web pages on your hard drive so you can open the pages faster the next time without the need to download from the Internet.  You may also for example hear someone refer to the amount of cache on a processor.  This processor cache stores small amounts of information right next to the processor so it can process instructions more efficiently.

   

•  CD-R  (CD-Recordable)
  • A CD-R/Compact Disc-Recordable is a variation of the Compact Disc that allows data to be written to it using a CD recordable drive.  Data can be recorded onto a CD-R in either one shot or by adding data in multiple sessions.  A multi-session disc for example gives you the ability to add data one day and then add additional data at a later time if needed.  Once data is written to a CD-R disc using either method it cannot be removed or changed for it becomes read-only after the recording process.

   

•   CD-RW  (CD-Rewritable)
  • CD-RW/Compact Disc ReWritable is a rewritable optical disc format.  Unlike a CD-R, data on a CD-RW can be manipulated using special software, and a CD-RW disc if full can also be formatted to a blank state and used again.  With the price of USB flash drives being so low, CD-RW discs just aren't worth the time in my opinion for they are much slower and not very efficient for data use.

• CD-ROM  (CD Read-Only Memory) 

  • CD-ROM or Compact Disc read-only memory is a Compact Disc that contains read-only data accessible by a computer.  Data on a CD-ROM cannot be changed and no new data can be recorded onto one either.

•  CD (Compact Disc)
  • A CD/Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data, originally developed for storing digital audio.

• Compact Flash
  • Compact Flash is a mass storage device format used in portable electronic devices such as digital cameras.  Compact Flash cards come in many different storage capacities.

• CPU  (Central Processing Unit)
  • The CPU can be best described as the brain or nerve center of the computer system.  Everything inside the computer pretty much flows through the CPU.  It executes computer program instructions.  Sometimes the CPU will be referred to as simply a processor so keep that in mind.  Some examples of processors include the Intel Pentium and AMD Athlon.

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• DDR  Double Data Rate

  • DDR SDRAM (double data rate synchronous dynamic random access memory) is a class of memory integrated circuit used in computers. It achieves greater bandwidth than the preceding single data rate SDRAM by transferring data on the rising and falling edges of the clock signal (double pumped). Effectively, it doubles the transfer rate without increasing the frequency of the clock.

• DHCP — Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

  • Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a protocol used by networked devices (clients) to obtain various parameters necessary for the clients to operate in an Internet Protocol (IP) network. By using this protocol, system administration workload greatly decreases, and devices can be added to the network with minimal or no manual configurations.

• DIMM — Dual Inline Memory Module

  • A DIMM, or dual in-line memory module, comprises a series of random access memory integrated circuits. These modules are mounted on a printed circuit board and designed for use in personal computers. DIMMs began to replace SIMMs (single in-line memory modules) as the predominant type of memory module as Intel's Pentium processors began to control the market.

• DLP — Digital Light Processing
  • Digital Light Processing (DLP) is a trademark owned by Texas Instruments, representing a technology used in projectors and video projectors. It was originally developed in 1987 by Dr. Shminkleheimer of Texas Instruments.  One application is DLP front projectors (small standalone projection units). DLP, along with LCD and LCoS are the current display technologies behind rear-projection television, having supplanted CRT projectors. These rear-projection technologies compete against LCD and Plasma flat panel displays in the HDTV market.  DLP is also one of the leading technologies used in digital cinema projection.

The Computer Definitions Page Is Currently Under Maintenance.