System Unit

RAM

Random access memory or RAM most commonly refers to computer chips that temporarily store dynamic data to enhance computer performance. By storing frequently used or active files in random access memory, the computer can access the data faster than if it to retrieve it from the far-larger hard drive. Random access memory is also used in printers and other devices. Random access memory is volatile memory, meaning it loses its contents once power is cut.

Cache
Cache is a component used by the central processing unit of a computer to reduce the average time to access memory. The cache is a smaller, faster memory which stores copies of the data from the most frequently used main memory locations. As long as most memory accesses are cached memory locations, the average latency of memory accesses will be closer to the cache latency than to the latency of main memory.

When the processor needs to read from or write to a location in main memory, it first checks whether a copy of that data is in the cache. If so, the processor immediately reads from or writes to the cache, which is much faster than reading from or writing to main memory.

ROM

Read-only memory or ROM is a computer memory in which data has been prerecorded. Once data has been written onto a ROM chip, it cannot be removed and can only be read. Unlike main memory (RAM), ROM retains its contents even when the computer is turned off. ROM is referred to as being nonvolatile, whereas RAM is volatile.

Flash Memory
Flash memory is a non-volatile computer storage chip that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It is primarily used in memory cards, USB flash drives, MP3 players and solid-state drives for general storage and transfer of data between computers and other digital products. It is a specific type of EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory) that is erased and programmed in large blocks; in early flash the entire chip had to be erased at once.



Graphic Card
A graphics card (also video card) is an expansion card or a piece of hardware installed in a computer that is responsible for rendering the image on the computer’s monitor or display screen.


Sound Card
A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs. The term sound card is also applied to external audio interfaces that use software to generate sound, as opposed to using hardware inside the PC. Typical uses of sound cards include providing the audio component for multimedia applications such as music composition, editing video or audio, presentation, education and entertainment (games) and video projection. Many computers have sound capabilities built in, while others require additional expansion cards to provide for audio capability.



Network Interface Card
A network interface card, more commonly referred to as a NIC, is a device that allows computers to be joined together in a LAN, or local area network. Networked computers communicate with each other using a given protocol or agreed-upon language for transmitting data packets between the different machines, known as nodes. The network interface card acts as the liaison for the machine to both send and receive data on the LAN.


Plug and Play
In computing, plug and play is a term used to describe the characteristic of a computer bus, or device specification, which facilitates the discovery of a hardware component in a system, without the need for physical device configuration, or user intervention in resolving resource conflicts.

Universal Serial Bus Port (USB)
A USB port is a standard cable connection interface on personal computers and consumer electronics. USB ports allow stand-alone electronic devices to be connected via cables to a computer (or to each other). USB stands for Universal Serial Bus, an industry standard for short-distance digital data communications. USB allows data to be transferred between devices. USB ports can also supply electric power across the cable to devices without their own power source. Both wired and wireless versions of the USB standard exist, although only the wired version involves USB ports and cables.

Serial Port
A port, or interface, that can be used for serial communication, in which only 1 bit is transmitted at a time.
Most serial ports on personal computers conform to the RS-232C or RS-422 standards. A serial port is a general-purpose interface that can be used for almost any type of device, including modems, mice, and printers (although most printers are connected to a parallel port).

Parallel Port
A parallel port is a type of interface found on computers (personal and otherwise) for connecting various peripherals. In computing, a parallel port is a parallel communication physical interface. It is also known as a printer port or Centronics port. The IEEE 1284 standard defines the bi-directional version of the port, which allows the transmission and reception of data bits at the same time.

Firewire Port

Firewire ports are forms of a serial port that make use of FireWire technology to transfer data rapidly from one electronic device to another. As a multi-platform serial bus, the FireWire port has the ability to interact with a number of different devices. A FireWire connection can provide an ideal way to connect a scanner to a computer system. Because the transfer rate of a FireWire port can reach up to 400Mbps, the data transfer is relatively fast and also results in excellent quality. Use of a FireWire port can mean images that are free of an loss of quality, and are excellent candidates for print after the download is complete.

Ethernet Port
An Ethernet port is an opening on computer network equipment that Ethernet cables plug into. These ports are alternatively called jacks or sockets. Ethernet ports accept cables with RJ-45 connectors.

High Definition Multimedia Interface Port (HDMI)
High Definition Multimedia Interface port (HDMI) is a audio/video interface for transmitting uncompressed digital data, normally used for high-end home theater systems.

Basic and Specialized Software Application

Graphical User Interface (GUI)
Graphical user interface (GUI) is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and office equipment . A GUI represents the information and actions available to a user through graphical icons and visual indicators such as secondary notation, as opposed to text-based interfaces, typed command labels or text navigation. The actions are usually performed through direct manipulation of the graphical elements.

Word Processor
Using a computer to create, edit, and print documents. Of all computer applications, word processing is the most common. To perform word processing, you need a computer, a special program called a word processor, and a printer. A word processor enables you to create a document, store it electronically on a disk, display it on a screen, modify it by entering commands and characters from the keyboard, and print it on a printer.

Spreadsheet
Spreadsheet applications (sometimes referred to simply as spreadsheets) are computer programs that let you create and manipulate spreadsheets electronically. In a spreadsheet application, each value sits in a cell. You can define what type of data is in each cell and how different cells depend on one another. The relationships between cells are called formulas, and the names of the cells are called labels.

DBMS (Database Management System)
A Database Management System (DBMS) is a software system for archiving files within a structured database such that previously saved versions are traceable and may be recovered in a systematic way. It is a set of computer programs that controls the creation, maintenance, and the use of a database. It allows organizations to place control of database development in the hands of database administrators (DBAs) and other specialists.

Utilities Suites
Utility suites are a bundle of utility softwares which are a kind of system software designed to help analyze, configure, optimize and maintain the computer. A single piece of utility software is usually called a utility (abbr. util) or tool. Utility software should be contrasted with application software, which allows users to do things like creating text documents, playing games, listening to music or surfing the web.

Web Authoring
A category of software that enables the user to develop a Web site in a desktop publishing format. The software will generate the required HTML coding for the layout of the Web pages based on what the user designs. Typically, the user can toggle back and forth between the graphical design and the HTML code and make changes to the Web page in either the design of the accompanying code.

Audio Editing Software
A digital audio editor is a computer application for audio editing, i.e. manipulating digital audio. Digital audio editors are the main software component of a digital audio workstation

Bitmap Images
Bitmaps images are exactly what their name says they are: a collection of bits that form an image. The image consists of a matrix of individual dots (or pixels) that all have their own colour (described using bits, the smallest possible units of information for a computer).

HTML Editor
An HTML editor is a software application for creating web pages. Although the HTML markup of a web page can be written with any text editor, specialized HTML editors can offer convenience and added functionality. There are various forms of HTML editors: text, object and WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors.

Image Editor
Image Editor is a free graphics editor with many of the features of a professional product. You can edit images from a variety of formats; it contains an extremely user-friendly interface enabling you to work intuitively.

Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun (a medium with multiple content forms) or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which only use traditional forms of printed or hand-produced material. Multimedia includes a combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video, and interactivity content forms.

Vector Images
Vector graphic is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon(s), which are all based on mathematical equations, to represent images in computer graphics.

The Internet, The Web & Electronic Commerce

URL
In computing, a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where a known resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. In popular usage and in many technical documents and verbal discussions it is often incorrectly used as a synonym for URI. The best-known example of the use of URLs is for the addresses of web pages on the World Wide Web, such as http://www.example.com/.

HTML
HTML, which stands for HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML is the basic building-blocks of webpages.
HTML is written in the form of HTML elements consisting of tags, enclosed in angle brackets (like <html>), within the web page content. HTML tags normally come in pairs. In between these tags web designers can add text, tables, images, etc.
The purpose of a web browser is to read HTML documents and compose them into visual or audible web pages. The browser does not display the HTML tags, but uses the tags to interpret the content of the page.
HTML elements form the building blocks of all websites. HTML allows images and objects to be embedded and can be used to create interactive forms. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. It can embed scripts in languages such as JavaScript which affect the behavior of HTML webpages.

Javascript
JavaScript, also known as ECMAScript, is a prototype-based, object-oriented scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is also considered a functional programming language because it has closures and supports higher-order functions.
JavaScript is an implementation of the ECMAScript language standard and is primarily used in the form of client-side JavaScript, implemented as part of a web browser in order to provide enhanced user interfaces and dynamic websites. This enables programmatic access to computational objects within a host environment.

Applets
In computing, an applet is any small application that performs one specific task that runs within the scope of a larger program, often as a plug-in. An applet typically also refers to Java applets, i.e., programs written in the Java programming language that are included in a web page. The word Applet was first used in 1993 by the application AppleScript.

Blogs
A blog (a blend of the term web log) is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites.
Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic.

Wikis
Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly.
Wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms in that it allows the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself.

FTP
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard Internet protocol for transmitting files between computers on the Internet. Like the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which transfers displayable Web pages and related files, and the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), which transfers e-mail, FTP is an application protocol that uses the Internet's TCP/IP protocols. FTP is commonly used to transfer Web page files from their creator to the computer that acts as their server for everyone on the Internet. It's also commonly used to download programs and other files to your computer from other servers.

Plug-in
In computing, a plug-in (or plugin) is a set of software components that adds specific abilities to a larger software application. If supported, plug-ins enable customizing the functionality of an application. For example, plug-ins are commonly used in web browsers to play video, scan for viruses, and display new file types. Well-known plug-ins examples include Adobe Flash Player and QuickTime.

Filters
A program that accepts a certain type of data as input, transforms it in some manner, and then outputs the transformed data. For example, a program that sorts names is a filter because it accepts the names in unsorted order, sorts them, and then outputs the sorted names.

Internet Security Suite
internet security suites contains a suite of utilities that combat digital dangers. The best internet security software applications provide protection that is practical, professional and priceless. Internet security suites include additional features and technology engineered to keep you and your computer safe on the internet.