Computer Terms

Personal Computer: is a small digital computer used by one person for

personal uses.
Hardware: is the part of the computer that you can actually touch such as
the monitor or the keyboard.
Motherboard: is the main circuit board that connects all the functions of
the computer together by having additional sockets that can accept
additional boards.
CPU: is the Central Processing Unit and it does most of the data processing
as well, it is the central part of a computer along with memory.
Random Access Memory (RAM): is the temporary memory stored in the
computer on a memory chip and data from the RAM is more quickly
accessible than data in the hard drive.
Back Up: is to make a copy of the files in another place for storage with
better security than your personal computer so that if you lose it on your
computer, there is another copy of it available.
Hard Drive: is a hardware that holds the majority of your memory. It holds
and spins on a magnetic or optical disk & reads and writes information on it.
Optical Disk Drive: (or optical storage) is a general term for any device
that reads and/or writes optical media that uses light (from a small laser) to
read data off a removable, rotating disk.
CD-ROM: stands for compact disk and the ROM stands for Read Only
Memory. Data can be read from a CD-ROM but data cannot be copied onto
the CD. It can store a medium amount of transportable data. Software is
usually stored on CDs.
DVD: stands for Digital Versatile/Video Disc and has a greater capacity for
storing data
Sound Card: is a plug-in optional circuit card for an IBM PC. It provides high
quality stereo output under program control.
Video Card: or graphics card is a circuit board fitted to a computer,
especially an IBM PC, containing necessary video memory & other electronics
to provide a bitmap display. It will vary in the number of pixels; resolution
and number of colours they can display.

Modern: is a typeface distinguished by regular shape, hairline serifs and

heavy down strokes.
Helvetica: is a sans-serif typeface similar to the common Arial typeface.
USB: stands for Universal Serial Bus and you can store information and write
data or read data off of this external peripheral device.
Infrastructure: Basic support services for computing, particularly national
networks.
Network (of computers): is a group of 2 or more computer systems linked
together. Different kinds of networks include:

Local-area networks (LAN)

Wide-area networks (WANs)
Campus-area networks (CANs)

Internet: is a global network connecting millions of computers. It is

decentralized meaning each Internet computer, called a host, is
independent. It is a massive network of networks, a networking
infrastructure.
Hashtag: is used for social networking. When a word of phase has a hashtag
(#) before it, it identifies a keyword or topic of interest.
World Wide Web: or known as Web, is a way of accessing information over
the medium of the Internet. It is an information-sharing program built over
the Internet. The Web uses HTTP to transmit data. The Web utilizes browsers
(Internet Explorer/Firefox) to access Web documents called Web pages that
are linked to each other with hyperlinks.
Digital literacy: is the knowledge, skills, and behaviours used in any digital
device such as PCs, smartphones, etc.