| Term |
Meaning |
| AGP |
Advanced Graphics Port
Slot inside your PC to take the latest fast graphic cards (Normally brown in colour) |
| AMD |
Advanced Micro Devices
Makers of Athlon, Duron & K6 range of processors |
| ASCII |
American Standard Code for Information Interchange
Computers can only understand numbers, so an ASCII code is a number which represents a character such as "a" or "@" |
| Backup |
The act of making copies of important files usually to floppy disk, tape or CD, in case of hard drive failure |
| BIOS |
Basic Input / Output System
Simple program built into every PC that sets up very basic things, like how many hard and floppy disks you have and what type they are, before passing control over to your operating system. It is the very first thing that loads when you start your PC |
| Blue Screen of Death |
Name given to the screen that appears when Windows encounters a hardware or software problem
Unfortunately this is all too common |
| Browser |
Program used to view (or browse) web pages on the Internet.
ie: Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator |
| Bug |
A problem or mistake in a computer program which means it doesn't work properly |
| Byte |
A measurement of computer memory equal to eight bits
1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte / 1024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte |
| Cookie |
Small text file stored on your computer from a web site, used to recognise you when you revisit the site
Commonly used by shopping sites to store a list of items that you are buying from them |
| CPU |
Central Processing Unit (Processor)
Example:- Pentium 3, Celeron, Athlon, Duron |
| DirectX |
Microsoft's "translation interface" language (needed for most games)
Allows programmers to more easily write programs (mostly games) to take advantage of all the many different types of hardware |
| Driver |
A program which sits between the operating system and a piece of hardware, like a printer, video card or sound card
A driver controls the way the computer and the piece of hardware communicate, and makes sure that the item understands the instructions given to it by the computer. |
| DVD |
Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc
Newer type of CD-ROM but capable of storing much more information (can hold up to 7 times as much information). By far the most common use at the moment is for movies |
| Favorites |
List of your "Favorite" web sites that you may wish to re-visit
While at a web site you can click on the favorites menu and add the web address to your list of favorite sites to re-visit at a later date, without having to remember the address yourself |
| Firewall |
A piece of software or hardware that protects your computer from attack by "hackers" while on the Internet
A good example of a free firewall is Zone Alarm |
| Hard Drive |
Storage device, which sits insides your PC
Your hard drive stores all your programs, games and your computer's operating system |
| Hardware |
Term given to any physical component of a computer
Eg: Monitor, video card, hard drive, mouse |
| Intel |
Makers of the Pentium® and Celeron® range of processors |
| ISA |
Industry Standard Architecture
Older type of expansion slot inside your PC. Used for modems, sounds cards etc (Normally black in colour) |
| ISP |
Internet Service Provider
The company who your PC connects to for Internet Access ie: Freeserve, AOL, IOW Cable etc |
| JPEG |
Joint Photographic Experts Group
JPEG is a compression technique for color images. It can reduce files sizes to a fraction of their normal size but some detail is lost in the compression. Most digital cameras store their pictures in this format |
| Multimedia |
Normally associated with a PC that can play music & sounds and display pictures & video |
| Network |
A network is group of 2 or more computers connected together so that they can share and exchange information with each other |
| PCI |
Peripheral Component Interconnect
Expansion slot inside your PC, can be used for virtually anything, eg: video cards, sound cards, modems, ethernet cards and so on (Normally white in colour) |
| PCMCIA |
Personal Computer Memory Card International Association
Commonly known as PC Cards, they are about the size of a credit card and are used for adding modems, Ethernet cards etc to Laptop computers |
| RAM |
Random access memory
This is where programs are loaded into when accessed from your hard drive (most modern PC's come with 64 megabytes or more) |
| Scanner |
Device that enables you to easily get printed documents or photographs into your PC |
| Software |
Software is a program that runs on your computer
It could be anything from a word processor to a game |
| USB |
Universal Serial Bus
New type of external expansion port allowing upto 127 devices to be connected to it, such as digital cameras, mice, webcams and joypads |
| Webcam |
Device to allow video conferencing over the Internet
Normally sits on top of your monitor allowing Internet users to chat to each other via video |
| Click here for more computer related terms |
