Transcript
Tuesday’s Technology Tips Geek Terms M-Z A Guide to Simplifying Geek Speak
Hey everyone, welcome back to another Technology Tips for Friday, April 22, 2016. In this week’s newsletter, we continue more on the “Geek Speak” guide using letters “M” to letter “Z”. This continues like last week’s newsletter to share some common geeky type terms that we computer techs like to use and discuss when we gather around the table eating fat free and sugar free donuts and drinking low fat low sugar decaffeinated coffee. (I misspelled decaffeinated last week and just noticed those red squiggly lines.) Please note before we go to the letters M-Z we need to take a quick break to remind you as our wonderful teachers, amazing support staff, and equally amazing and wonderful administrators to be sure and back up your files off the C drive that may be stored on the local computer. We like to remind you of this because over the summer your dedicated and friendly IT support employees will be updating software and trying to be sure your computers are running in excellent shape when you return to school in the fall.
We don’t anticipate any bad things happening to your laptops or computers over the summer but just in case we want to remind you a great insurance (or is it ensurance) plan that will keep you from losing your valuable files and documents you have on your local C drive of the computer. We want you to back up your files off the computer onto the server and Google documents. Please back up your files by removing them from your local C drive Downloads and Documents folder on your C drive and copying them to your teacher home folder. You can access your teacher home folder by going to Start, Computer, and looking for the letter F which is the drive letter usually where your teacher home folder is located. You can simply Copy and Paste documents into your teacher home folder. This way you can be sure the documents and files you have that are very important are backed up on the server. I’m also a huge fan of Google documents as a way of storing and saving files under your Google drive. Google drive is very nice because it’s portable. You can access your files and documents anywhere you have an internet connection. And it has plenty of storage space for your files and documents. Please consider copying your important files and backing them up before the end of the school term. The files you save and back up could be important in Fall of 2016 when you start back to school.
Now off to the “Geek Speak” from letters M to letter Z.
Malware--Short for "malicious software," malware refers to software programs designed to damage or do other unwanted actions on a computer system. Common examples of malware include viruses, worms, trojan horses, and spyware. Viruses, for example, can cause havoc on a computer's hard drive by deleting files or directory information. Spyware can gather data from a user's system without the user knowing it. This can include anything from the Web pages a user visits to personal information, such as credit card numbers.
Maximizing a window makes it larger. In Windows, a maximized window fills the entire screen, while on a Mac, it takes up only as much space as needed. The maximize button in Windows is located in the upper-right corner of the window, next to the close button. If you double-click the title bar, it will also maximize the window. On a Mac, the maximize button is three green button located next to the red and yellow buttons in the upper-left corner of the window.
A megapixel is one million pixels. It is commonly used to describe the resolution of digital cameras. For example, a 7.2 megapixel camera is capable of capturing roughly 7,200,000
pixels. The higher the megapixel number, the more detail the camera can capture. Therefore, the megapixel count is a significant specification to look for when buying a digital camera.
A motherboard is the main circuit board of your computer and is also known as the mainboard or logic board. If you ever open your computer, the biggest piece of silicon you see is the motherboard. Attached to the motherboard, you'll find the CPU, ROM, memory RAM expansion slots, PCI slots, and USB ports. It also includes controllers for devices like the hard drive, DVD drive, keyboard, and mouse. Basically, the motherboard is what makes everything in your computer work together.
Netiquette Netiquette, or net etiquette, refers to etiquette on the Internet. Good netiquette involves respecting others' privacy and not doing anything online that will annoy or frustrate other people. Three areas where good netiquette is highly stressed are e-mail, online chat, and newsgroups. For example, people that spam other users with unwanted e-mails or flood them with messages have very bad netiquette. You don't want to be one of those people. If you're new to a newsgroup or online chat room, it may help to observe how people communicate with each other before jumping in.
NIC Stands for "Network Interface Card." Pronounced "nick," this is the card that physically makes the connection between the computer and the network cable. These cards typically use an Ethernet connection and are available in 10, 100, and 1000 Base-T configurations. A 100 Base-T card can transfer data at 100 Mbps. The cards come in ISA and PCI versions and are made by companies like 3Com and LinkSys. So if you want to connect your computer to a network, you better get yourself a NIC.
OEM Stands for "Original Equipment Manufacturer." This refers to a company that produces hardware to be marketed under another company's brand name. For example, if Sony makes a monitor that will marketed by Dell, a "Dell" label will get stuck on the front, but the OEM of the monitor is Sony. You can also use the term as a verb, such as, "That Dell monitor over there is OEM'd by Sony." That should impress your friends.
Outbox An outbox is where outgoing e-mail messages are temporarily stored. While you are composing a message, most mail programs automatically save a draft of your message in the outbox. The message is then stored in the outbox until it is successfully sent to the recipient. Once the message has been sent, most e-mail programs move the message to the "Sent" or "Sent
Messages" folder. While the terms "Outbox" and "Sent Messages" are often used synonymously, technically they have different meanings.
Phishing Phishing is similar to fishing in a lake, but instead of trying to capture fish, phishers attempt to steal your personal information. They send out e-mails that appear to come from legitimate websites such as eBay, PayPal, or other banking institutions. The e-mails state that your information needs to be updated or validated and ask that you enter your username and password, after clicking a link included in the e-mail. Some e-mails will ask that you enter even more information, such as your full name, address, phone number, social security number, and credit card number. However, even if you visit the false website and just enter your username and password, the phisher may be able to gain access to more information by just logging in to your account.
Plug and Play Plug and Play, sometimes, abbreviated PnP, is a catchy phrase used to describe devices that work with a computer system as soon as they are connected. The user does not have to manually install drivers for the device or even tell the computer that a new device has been added. Instead the computer automatically recognizes the device, loads new drivers for the hardware if needed, and begins to work with the newly connected device.
Processor This little chip is the heart of a computer. Also referred to as the "microprocessor," the processor does all the computations such as adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. In PCs, the most popular microprocessor used is the Intel Pentium chip, whereas Macintosh computers use the PowerPC chip (developed by Motorola, IBM, and Apple). The speed of a computer's processor is measured in megahertz, or cycles per second. But higher megahertz doesn't always mean better performance. Though a 600-MHz chip has a clock speed that is twice as fast as a 300-Mhz chip, it doesn't mean that the computer with the 600-Mhz chip will run twice as fast. This is because the speed of a computer is also influenced by other factors, such as the efficiency of the processor, the bus architecture, the amount of memory available, and the software that is running on the computer. Some processors can complete more operations per clock cycle than other processors, making them more efficient than other processors with higher clock speeds. This is why the PowerPC chip is typically faster than Pentium chips at that are clocked at higher megahertz.
Queue To avoid any confusion, this term is pronounced exactly like the letter "Q". A queue is a list of jobs that are awaiting to be processed. When a job is sent to a queue, it is simply added to the list
of jobs. Computer programs often work with queues as a way to order tasks. For example, when the CPU finishes one computation, it will process the next one in the queue. A printer queue is a list of documents that are waiting to be printed. When you decide to print a document, it is sent to the printer queue. If there are no jobs currently in the queue, the document will be printed immediately. However, if there are jobs already in the queue, the new document will be added to the list and printed when the others have finished. Most printers today come with software that allows you to manually sort, cancel, and add jobs to the printer queue. While this may not seem like a great benefit for the typical home user, it can be a helpful tool for businesses where many people share one printer.
RAM Stands for "Random Access Memory," and is pronounced like the male sheep. RAM is made up of small memory chips that form a memory module. These modules are installed in the RAM slots on the motherboard of your computer. Every time you open a program, it gets loaded from the hard drive into the RAM. This is because reading data from the RAM is much faster than reading data from the hard drive. Running programs from the RAM of the computer allows them to function without any lag time. The more RAM your computer has, the more data can be loaded from the hard drive into the RAM, which can effectively speed up your computer. In fact, adding RAM can be more beneficial to your computer's performance than upgrading the CPU.
Registry This is a database used by Microsoft Windows to store configuration information about the software installed on a computer. This information includes things like the desktop background, program settings, and file extension associations.
Safe Mode Safe Mode is a way for the Windows operating system to run with the minimum system files necessary. It uses a generic VGA display driver instead of the vendor-specific driver, which means you will likely be working with only 16 colors in a resolution of 640x480. Safe Mode also turns off all third-party drivers for other peripherals such as mice, keyboards, printers, and scanners. In basic Safe Mode, networking files and settings are not loaded, meaning you won't be able to connect to the Internet or other computers on a network.
Spoofing The word "spoof" means to hoax, trick, or deceive. Therefore, in the IT world, spoofing refers tricking or deceiving computer systems or other computer users. This is typically done by hiding one's identity or faking the identity of another user on the Internet.
SSD SSD is short for "Solid State Drive." An SSD serves the same purpose as a (hard drive|hard drive), but uses flash memory rather than spindle of magnetic disks. It is called a "solid state drive" because it has no moving parts. Since SSDs do not need to move a physical drive head to read data, they can access data faster than hard drives. They also do not need to be defragemented, since their performance does not depend on where data is stored on the disk. Since solid state drives have a number of advantages over hard drives, they have begun to replace hard drives in laptops and other devices.
System Requirements Whenever you purchase software or hardware for your computer, you should first make sure your computer supports the system requirements. These are the necessary specifications your computer must have in order to use the software or hardware. For example, a computer game may require you computer to have Windows XP or later, a 2.0 GHz processor, 512 MB or RAM, a 64 MB graphics card, and 500 MB or hard drive space. If your computer does not meet all of these requirements, the game will not run very well or might not run at all.
Upload While downloading is receiving a file from another computer, uploading is the exact opposite. It is sending a file from your computer to another system. Pretty straight forward. It is possible to upload and download at the same time, but it may cause slower transfer speeds, especially if you have a low bandwidth connection. Because most files are located on Internet servers, people generally do a lot more downloading than uploading.
Video Card Most of the processing done on a computer is done via the computer's central processing unit, or CPU. So in order to give the CPU a break and help it run more efficiently, a video card can be used to process the graphics portion of the processing load. Because most of today's programs are graphically oriented, the video card can help almost any program run more efficiently. However, the difference in performance is especially noticeable in image editing applications and 3D games.
Worm A computer worm is a type of virus that replicates itself, but does not alter any files on your machine. However, worms can still cause havoc by multiplying so many times that they take up your entire computer's available memory or hard disk space. If a worm consumes your memory, your computer will run very slowly and possibly even crash. If the worm affects your hard disk space, your computer will take a long time to access files and you will not be able to save or create new files until the worm has been eradicated.
Worms are hard to detect because they are typically invisible files. They often go unnoticed until your computer begins to slow down or starts having other problems. Unlike viruses and Trojan horses, worms can replicate themselves and travel between systems without any action from the user. For these reasons, it is good to have an antivirus program installed on your system that can detect and remove worms before they have a chance to replicate or spread to other computers. Security updates such as Windows Update also patch security holes that allow worms to infect your computer. So keep your security updates and virus definitions up-to-date and you should be able to keep your computer worm-free.
Zip Windows users will see this term a lot when looking for files on the Internet. A zip file (.zip) is a "zipped" or compressed file. "Zipping" a file involves compressing one or more items into a smaller archive. A zipped file takes up less hard drive space and takes less time to transfer to another computer. This is why most Windows files that you find on the Internet are compressed.
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