| AC (alternating current) |
A type of electrical current that reverses its direction at a regular interval, and can be represented by a sine wave. Alternating current is the type of current typically found in a wall outlet. You plug your TV, computer, refrigerator, etc. into alternating current. These devices then change the alternating current into direct current (DC) so that they can use the current properly. Alternating current is the reason that we need such complex power supplies, or power bricks, to regulate the flow of current in electronic devices. |
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| Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) |
A dedicated expansion port that began to show up on motherboards in the second half of 1997. It bypasses the PCI bus and allows higher throughput from the graphics card to the processor and memory for speedier 3D graphics. Original AGP cards were 1X versions that ran at 66MHz, offering 266MB/second throughput; but now AGP supports up to 8X data transfer speeds, which means the card still runs at 66MHz, but transfers 8x as much data per clock tick, upping the throughput to 2.1GB/second. Although the throughput is much greater, most graphics cards have a large amount of local memory and thus do not get much of a bonus from faster AGP speeds. |
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| Access Speed |
The average amount of time it takes for a floppy drive, hard drive, CD drive, or other drive to find any particular piece of data on a disk and send it to your PC. Access speed is typically listed in milliseconds (ms). |
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| ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) |
This power management interface takes the power management out of the BIOS and gives control to the operating system (OS). Typically, a system's BIOS is only able to turn a device off after a certain period of inactivity. With ACPI, the user can instruct the OS to slow down the processor or enter sleep mode. This basically gives the OS, and thus the user, more control of power management. |
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| Active Directory |
A Microsoft technology based on LDAP that provides a unified view and way to manage all objects on a network. Microsoft created Active Directory as a response to Novell's NDS system that allows administrators to control large networks in a similar manner. Active Directory was first introduced with Windows 2000, and many organizations are moving from the domain model of Windows NT to the Active Directory model of Windows 2000. |
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| Active Server Pages (ASP) |
Microsoft created this technology and bundled it with its IIS webserver software. It is designed to allow easy combination of HTML, scripts (such as JavaScript and Microsoft's VBScript), and ActiveX. Active Server Pages promise to be more robust than CGI when handling large amounts of client requests, but that competition is close and ongoing. |
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| ActiveX |
A Microsoft technology that uses COM technology, and is designed to enable easier embedding of interactive objects, and often multimedia, on Web pages. To interact with ActiveX on sites that support it, your browser must support it as well. |
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| ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) |
A technology that is the phone company's answer to cable modems. It supports data speeds over 7Mbps downstream (to the user) and slower speeds upstream (to the Internet). Asymmetric describes how the upstream speed is different than the downstream speed. |
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| Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) |
This power management interface takes the power management out of the BIOS and gives control to the operating system (OS). Typically, a system's BIOS is only able to turn a device off after a certain period of inactivity. With ACPI, the user can instruct the OS to slow down the processor or enter sleep mode. This basically gives the OS, and thus the user, more control of power management. |
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| Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANet) |
A network of interconnected computers that formed the original Internet. The United States military funded the ARPANet, and construction was started in 1968. It was designed to be a redundant network of computers so that no single disruption could break down communications between other units. The ARPANet expanded to universities for research, and soon after the Internet was born. |
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| Advanced SCSI Programming Interface (ASPI) |
This was developed by Adaptec so that different devices could be controlled by different SCSI cards, and therefore the SCSI card version would not matter. Basically, if the correct ASPI driver is being used, you can send the same command to any Adaptec SCSI card to make something happen to a device. Most commonly, ASPI is associated with CD-ROM and CD-RW drives. |
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| AT Attachment (ATA) |
A storage (hard drive, CD-ROM, etc.) interface more commonly known as IDE. The AT refers to the IBM-AT computer where this interface was first used. |
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| AT Attachment Packet Interface (ATAPI) |
This interface is part of EIDE, and it allows a PC to control CD-ROM drives and tape drives across the IDE interface. |
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| AT Form Factor |
A PC form factor that describes the way a motherboard fits into a case and works with a power supply. Thus, you match an AT power supply with an AT case and an AT motherboard. Some of the things common to AT motherboards are a large 5-pin DIN socket for plugging a keyboard in, and serial and parallel port interfaces available via riser cards that are not part of the motherboard itself. The AT form factor was succeeded by the ATX form factor. |
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| ATA (AT Attachment) |
A storage (hard drive, CD-ROM, etc.) interface more commonly known as IDE. The AT refers to the IBM-AT computer where this interface was first used. |
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| ATA/100 (Ultra ATA/100) |
Another extension to the ATA interface that adds a 50% increase in top speed over ATA/66, getting to 100MB/second, up from 66MB/second. This standard also adds some additional error-checking not found in earlier ATA standards. Like Ultra ATA/66, ATA/100 requires an 80-conductor cable to work at full speed. |
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| ATA/133 (Ultra ATA/133) |
This refers to what is most probably the final extension to the parallel ATA connection standard. The proposal was created by Maxtor, and allows a top data transfer rate of 133 megabytes per second. Intel didn't support this standard in its chipsets, instead opting to wait for Serial ATA. See Serial ATA for further details. |
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| ATA/33 (Ultra ATA/33) |
An extension to the ATA interface (IDE) that effectively doubles the top data transfer speed of IDE from 16.6MBytes/second up to 33 MBytes/second. Also known as Ultra-IDE. |
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| ATA/66 (Ultra ATA/66) |
An extension to the ATA interface (IDE) proposed by Quantum that effectively doubles the data transfer speed of the Ultra ATA/33 interface to 66MBps. To achieve the increase in speed you must use a special 80-conductor cable with 40 data lines and 40 ground lines to keep the signal stable. |
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| AVI (Audio Video Interleave) |
A Microsoft-specified format for saving audio and/or video clips, referred to by Windows as "Video for Windows." You can play the files through the Media Player in Windows or through many popular browser plug-in multimedia players. Files of this type have a .avi extension. |
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| Domain name |
An internet address name, also known as a URL is used to find the location of a web server on the internet. The name is translated into an IP address that specifies the exact location of a web server. |
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| IP address |
A number that is assigned to a server, computer, or other device on the internet or other network. This is usually in a format similar to: 192.168.0.255. |
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| Web hosting account |
An account that hold files for a website and e-mail messages. |
