Page 11 - Appendix Final

Short List of popular Windows & Computer Terms

Windows Glossary
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/uxguide/glossary

Actuator arm (or Access arm)
Located inside a hard disc drive enclosure. The ASCII (American Standard Code
or Information Interchange.)
arm holds all the read/write heads and is acti-
vated by instructions from the Operating sys- Pronounced ‘asskee’ and sometimes referred to as plain
tem. text’. ASCII is a form of text that contains characters which
can be read by any type of computer. It can be typed out by
Adapter card (or Expansion card) any standard keyboard into a word processor or text editor.
Usually a small circuit board inserted into a The only restrictions are, it cannot contain bold, italics, col-
predefined slot on the motherboard. An expan- oured text or any variation in fonts.
sion card will add more functionality to the
motherboard by adding features and periph- ASPI (Advanced SCSI Programming Interface)
erals
A protocol providing a connection between drivers and
Address ‘SCSI’ devices.
1. A unique hexadecimal number allocated to a particular
device, or memory, storage area/location. 2. A location (or ATAPI (AT Attachment Packet Interface),
URL = https://www.google.com) on the internet. The specification for IDE drives, like tape drives and CD-
ROM drives…
Address bus (or Address lines)
A channel or line on the motherboard the CPU uses to Athlon
transmit ‘data addresses’ (Not the data) to memory. A high-speed Pentium 111-class CPU chip first introduced
in 1999 by AMD, and from then on, has constantly been
ADSL (Subscriber Line.) updated.

The preferred type of broadband Internet connection. It
has widely replaced the old and slow modem style Inter- AutoRun ( or AutoStart)
net connecting. The advantages of an ADSL connection is Allows CD’s or DVD’s, containing music, films to run auto-
that it’s always connected and has the benefit of being matically when inserted into a Cd/DVD drive. For this to
able to use the same line to make and receive a telephone happen, the Disk must contain the file ‘Autorun.inf’. The
call while connected to the Internet. autorun file tells windows to run the disk straight away and
not to wait on any user input. The autorun file is most pop-
Adware ularly used to install programs and display the contents of a
Free software that comes bundled with advertisements. disk.
These ads help pay the developers for the software. Not to
be confuse with freeware which you don’t have to pay for Average seek time
and has no ads and shareware where you’ve a trial period The average time, on a disk drive, it takes to move data, or
then have to pay for the software. read\write it, from its present location to another location
on the disk.
AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port)
A high-speed graphics port (or bus) connected directly to Back-slash ‘\’ Symbol
the display adapter and memory. In computing the back-slash is used in coding and used as a
separator when writing a clear ‘Path’ through the maze of
Alphanumeric: Consisting of letters and numbers. folders usually found on computer systems. (see Forward-
slash)
Application (or App)
An interactive program designed to perform a specific task Backup
within the Operating system. Modern ‘Apps’ are self- A backup (A copy of the originals) is a set of Files, Folders
contained programs designed to run on an operating sys- and often an entire operating system copied to a safe loca-
tem. They run isolated from the system. It can also refer to tion either on the user’s computer or on a network server
any process or feature running on your computer (The Cloud) for safe keeping. These backups or copies are
used to replace files and folder, should the working origi-
Attachment nals become lost, stolen or corrupted. ( see Incremental &
A file/Photos/Folder sent with an email message. Differential)

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