pantherproducts heading


Jargon Dictionary - A

Back to index

Jargon Explanation
A3D An Audio API from Aureal that allows it to produce realistic 3D sounds and positioning - Aureal claims that its software can make a sound appear to becoming from anywhere in 3D space even on a 2 speaker system. Although the technology does work better with surround sound.  
ABIOS Advanced Basic Input Output System - Sounds like they didn't read this properly when they gave this its name. an Advanced basic system a contradiction there. It means though that this BIOS is up to Today's standards, supporting today's software and peripherals.
ACPI Advanced Configurations Power Interface - A Power management Interface for controlling Power management items such as System standby.  
ActiveX A powerful windows based programming tool. ActiveX allows programmers to create lots of tools and functional websites. Unfortunately hackers use ActiveX to hack into your computer while you are online and is recommended to be switched off in internet explorer. You can do this in the security settings of Internet explorer.
ADSL Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line - Telephone technology that allows a broadband service over the standard telephone line. You can lease bandwidths up to 2Mbps. The home service though is 512Kbps almost ten times faster than the standard modem.
Adware A piece of software responsible for popping up ads on your computer while surfing. This programs can track your sites and pop up relevant ads. These programs normally get installed when you download some free software. Look up adware on a search engine to get adware removers
AGP Accelerated Graphics Port - The AGP is a computer bus that gives faster access to the main memory. Quicker than the PCI bus. Specially designed to meet the demands of today's high tech graphics cards.
AGP Pro An AGP port which supplies extra power to the graphics card - New graphics cards are requiring more power an so will need the AGP pro port in order to work 
Anti-Aliasing Graphics card technology for smoothing out jagged edges. Read more with our article on Anti-Aliasing
API Application Program Interface - An interface between the operating system and the application software. the API controls the way the application communicates with the operating system. Graphics cards have a few API's like Open GL, Direct 3D and Glide 
APM Advanced Power Management - The predecessor of ACPI. Controls the power systems in the PC such as shutdown, standby and switching off energy efficient monitors. 
Application An Application is a piece of software that helps a person accomplish a specific task. for example a spreadsheet is an application to help people with accounting and number tasks. A word processor is an application to help people write stories, letters and documents. Applications come in many forms. An application is any software that help accomplish a task. There are system applications such as disk checkers and defragmenters as well.  
Architecture The basic design of computers hardware. Different computers architectures very rarely work together the best example is the PC and the Mac
ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange - A code that gives every alpha numeric character a number from 0-127. Each number is translated into a 7-bit code for the computer to understand. ASCII takes the role of basic code so as many computers can understand it as possible. 
ASP Active Server Page - A web page that is dynamically created by the web server, it contains both standard HTML and scripting code.
ATA Advanced Technology Attachment -  More commonly and mainly incorrectly termed IDE. when a Hard Disk rates IDE 66 it means ATA 66 as well. Hard Disk manufacturers are starting to use ATA instead of IDE now. for more info on the ATA standard see http://ata-atapi.com/  
ATAPI Advanced Technology Attachment Packet Interface - Another industry standard mainly on CD-ROM Drives some BIOS's don't accept CD Drives that are not ATAPI compatible.
ATX / AT Types of computer cases. the older AT style case is slowly being phased out. the new ATX case has new power power connectors and is not inter-changeable with the AT style. Newer motherboards only use the ATX style now.

 
© 2006 PantherProducts. All rights reserved. Trademarks are the copyright of their respected owners. PantherProducts attempts to keep all information accurate but cannot accept responsibility for anything caused by information on these pages.