| It says... | It means... |
| E-commerce | Conducting business over the internet, and particularly the World Wide Web. |
| EIDE | (Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics) An extremely popular hard disk format. As its name implies, an upgraded version of IDE. |
| EISA | (Extended Industry Standard Architecture; pr. "ee-icer") An upgraded version of ISA, now obsolete; usually used with reference to expansion cards. |
| Email (or e-mail) | (Electronic mail; pr. "ee-mail") A way to send messages between computers, or more to the point their users, either over a network or the Internet. E-mail is usually just text. Although it is possible to send pictures, sounds or even programs as e-mail, you should check with the person you are sending to first, as some e-mail systems don't accept messages over a certain size (even the longest text message is tiny compared to a picture). |
| Emoticon | (EMOTion ICON) A group of symbols used to indicate emotions in email or newsgroups. The most popular is the smiley :-) or :) (look at it sideways), but there are lots of variations including the sad face :-( , the wink ;-) , and the astonished face :-0 . |
| Encrypt, encryption | Coding data so that it can't be read by hackers etc when transmitted over the internet. For example, any reputable website selling goods by credit card will encrypt your credit card number and personal details. |
| Ethernet | The most popular system used to connect a computer to a network, including most broadband internet connections. The computer needs to be fitted with a suitable expansion card, usually called an Ethernet card. |
| EULA | End-user license agreement, is a contract between the licensor and purchaser of the right to use software. |
| Excel | The most popular spreadsheet program for PCs, part of the Microsoft Office suite. |
| exe (or .exe) | (EXEcutable; pr. "exie", "dot exie" ) A file which is usually the main part of a program. A program may consist of just an exe file and nothing else, or there may be dozens of files, including more exes. |
| Expansion card (or board) | A circuitboard which can be inserted into an expansion slot on the PC's motherboard, to give the PC extra capabilities. Common examples are sound cards, graphics cards and network cards. |
| Expansion slot | A socket on a PC motherboard into which you can insert expansion cards to increase the PC's capabilities. Most PCs have several PCI slots, plus an AGP slot for a graphics card. |
| Extension | The part of a PC filename after the dot (.), often used to tell Windows what type of file it is. For example, files ending in .exe are programs, and files ending .jpg or .gif are pictures. Note that Windows is sometimes set up not to display the extension in Windows Explorer or My Computer, another helpful idea to confuse beginners from our friends at Microsoft. |
| FAQ | (Frequently Asked Questions). A document on a website or in a newsgroup which gives answers to common problems and questions. Look for an FAQ if you have a problem with something, before you email or phone support. |
| FAT | (File Allocation Table; pr. "fat") A sort of index of where data is stored on a hard disk, used by the operating system. |
| FDD | (Fixed Disk Drive, Floppy Disk Drive). The slot on the PC which accepts floppy disks, almost always referred to as "Drive A:" by the computer. |
| FFS | (For F***'s Sake) Internet slang, not suitable for polite company. |
| File | All information on a computer is stored in files, whether it is part of a program, a document created by a user, a picture, or anything else. Most software is made up of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of different files. |
| File server | A type of computer used on networks to provide files and other services to other computers. Often just called a server. |
| Filter | A device which allows you to use an ordinary phone over a telephone line set up for an ADSL internet connection. Also called a micro-filter. |
| Firefox | A popular alternative browser, available free from Mozilla, which you can use instead of Internet Explorer. It has a number of useful extra features, but perhaps the best is that it doesn't support Windows' ActiveX, thus preventing rogue websites from using ActiveX to hijack your computer. |
| Firewall | Originally a dedicated computer between you and the internet, preventing hackers, spammers and similar undesirables from taking over your PC. Now often just a program running on your PC, performing the same task. Absolutely essential if you have an always-on internet connection such as ADSL or cable. |
| Firewire | A standard for very fast data transfer, popular for applications that use very large files, particularly video editing. Requires special hardware, generally added to a computer as an expansion card. |
| Flame | Internet slang for an email or newsgroup post insulting or telling someone off. They range from elegant rapier wit to obscene profanity. |
| Flamewar | A public trading of insults in a newsgroup or forum. Sometimes flamewars get so out of hand that there are hundreds of flames in the newsgroup and almost nothing else. |
| Flash | A technology for displaying animations (mostly) on webpages, created by the Macromedia Corporation. The Flash Player is a plugin which enables internet browsers to display the animations. |
| Flash drive | A removable data storage device, usually thumb sized and plugged into a PC's USB port. |
| Floppy disk | Also known as a diskette. Originally called floppy disks because they were round and non-rigid, but modern floppies might as well be called rigid squares, as the actual floppy disk is enclosed inside a rigid, almost square protective casing. Most programs used to be released on floppy disks, but modern programs are so large that they are now released on CD ROM instead. Despite a capacity of only 1.44 Meg per diskette, until recently all new computers were fitted with them as standard, and many still are. |
| FOAD | (<bleep> Off And Die) Internet slang. Pretty self-explanatory really. |
| Folder | An area on a disk for storing files in. Folders can also contain other folders, which in turn can contain more folders, and so on almost to infinity. Also called a directory, especially by people used to DOS. |
| Forum | A public or semi-public area on a website or bulletin board where you can read and post messages on a particular topic, allowing public debate. See also Usenet, newsgroups. |
| FPS | 1 (Frames Per Second) A measure of the smoothness and quality of animations, particularly in computer games. The more frames per second, the better the quality. 2 (First Person Shooter) A computer game where you shoot things, played from a first person perspective, ie with you standing behind the gun(s). Also known as a shoot-'em-up. |
| frag | Shoot someone in a computer game. |
| FTP | (File Transfer Protocol). A way of transferring files to or from an internet server. Often how you upload webpages to the internet. |
| GB | See Gigabyte. |
| GHz | Gigahertz - billions of cycles per second. Often used as a measurement of a PC processor chip's speed and power, with bigger numbers meaning a bit more speed, and a higher price. 1000 MHz = 1.0 GigaHertz. See also MHz. |
| GIF | (Graphics Interchange Format) is a bitmap image format widely used on the WWW. It supports animations and allows a separate palette of 256 colors for each frame. The color limitation makes the GIF format unsuitable for reproducing color photographs and other images with continuous color, but it is well-suited for simpler images such as graphics or logos with solid areas of color. See also jpg, compression. |
| Gigabyte (or Gig) | Unit of measurement for pieces of information : approximately 1 billion bytes, 1 million kilobytes, or 1000 megabytes. Hard disk sizes are usually measured in gigabytes. Often shortened to "GB", "Gig" or just G. |
| GIGO | (Garbage In Garbage Out; pr. "guy-go") Programmer's slang. A reminder of a fundamental principle of computing, that unexpected results are often caused by feeding a computer bad data, rather than a fault in the computer or program. |
| GPF | (General Protection Fault) An common error message in early versions of Windows, seen when a program tried to do something Windows thought it shouldn't, often locking up the PC. |
| Graphics | A catch-all term for anything involving drawing images on a PC screen. A game with great graphics is one that is visually spectacular. |
| Graphics card (or controller) | An expansion card which the PC uses to control the monitor's graphics. Modern PCs have a dedicated slot for graphics cards called AGP, but you can also still get PCI format cards. |
| GUI | (Graphical User Interface; pr. "gooey") means that a program's controls are represented pictorially, with symbols, buttons and so forth, and mostly controlled by pointing and clicking with a mouse rather than having to type in text commands. Almost all modern software is GUI controlled. (see also Windows, WYSIWYG). |
| Hacker | Person who uses computers to access ("hack") systems they are not supposed to have access to, eg other people's financial details, personnel files, military secrets etc. |
| HAND | (Have A Nice Day) Internet slang, often used ironically. |
| Hard disk | A computer's main (and fastest and most convenient) storage for programs and data. Originally named to distinguish it from floppy disks. All PCs are fitted with hard disks, sometimes more than one. The first (or only) hard disk is usually called C: by the computer. The most popular hard disk format is called EIDE. |
| Hardware | The physical parts of a computer. |
| HD, HDD | (Hard Disk Drive) The main data storage unit in a computer. See hard disk. |
| HDMI | High-Definition Multimedia Interface is a compact audio/video interface for transmitting uncompressed digital data. |
| Homepage | A page on the World Wide Web. Confusingly "homepage" is used indiscriminately to describe several slightly different things : an amateur's hobby site; the front or main page of any website; or the page which your browser first goes to when you start it up. |
| Hotspot | A location where a computer can connect to a wireless network (see Wi-Fi). |
| HTH | (Hope This Helps) Internet slang, often added at the end of an email or newsgroup post answering a question. |
| HTML | (HyperText Markup Language) The system used for creating World Wide Web pages, ordinary text with commands for special effects like pictures, colour and links enclosed between < > symbols. You can add the various HTML commands to ordinary text by hand or have it generated for you by software, either one of the many specialist editors or even a word processing program like Microsoft Word (although Word isn't very good at it). |
| http | (HyperText Transfer Protocol) The protocol or "language" computers use to send web pages over the internet. Almost every WWW address starts "http://", though many browsers understand if you omit it. |
| Hub | A basic device for connecting computers together to form a network. |
| Hung | If a computer (or sometimes just a program) gets completely stuck and refuses to do anything, it has hung. See also lockup. |
| Hyperlink | Any kind of link on a webpage. Unless you typed this page's URL in by hand, you got here by clicking on a hyperlink. |
| Hypertext | A way of presenting text so that you can click on a link within it, say a cross-reference, and instantly be transported to the relevant text, whether it is elsewhere in the current document or in another document entirely. The most obvious examples are World Wide Web pages and Windows helpfiles. |
| IANAL | (I Am Not A Lawyer) Internet slang. Amazing how often this one comes up. |
| IBM | (International Business Machines) The company that designed and built the first PCs, and still a giant of the industry. Standard PCs were originally referred to as "IBM compatible", although IBM no longer controls the PC standard. |
| Icon | Small pictogram either representing a file, or providing shortcuts for carrying out common tasks such as saving and printing inside an application. |
| IDE | (Integrated Drive Electronics ) A type of PC hard disk, now obsolete, the foreunner of EIDE. |
| IE | (Internet Explorer) Microsoft's web browser, included free in Windows. If followed by a number (IE6, IE5 etc) it refers to a particular version of that browser. |
| IIRC | (If I Recall Correctly) Internet slang. |
| IM | (Instant Messenging) A program that allows you to "chat" live via keyboard over the internet. Both parties must be running the same IM software - there are several different brands, mostly incompatible with each other. |
| IMO, IMHO | (In My (Honest) Opinion) Internet slang. |
| Inkjet | A very popular colour printer technology, which works by squirting tiny jets of ink onto paper with great precision. |
| Install | To transfer a program or programs from floppy disk or CD ROM onto a PC's hard disk. Most programs need to be installed before they can be used, though a few can be run directly from the floppy or CD. |
| Intel | The Intel Corporation is the leading manufacturer of processor chips for PCs, most famously the Pentium. |
| Internet |
A vast worldwide network of computers, accessible to anyone with a computer, a modem, and a phone line. Provides access to e-mail and the World Wide Web. The Internet grew out of the need of academics to swap information with colleagues all over the world, and of the US military's need for a computer and communications network that couldn't easily be knocked out. As a result it is very difficult to censor, since anything placed on the World Wide Web from anywhere is instantly available everywhere in the world. |
| Intranet | A private miniature internet which allows no or only limited access to the internet proper, for example to allow easy sharing of confidential files within a company or corporation. |
| IP | (Internet Protocol ) A protocol (computer language) which computers use to communicate with and over the internet. |
| IP address | (Internet Protocol address) A unique number assigned to any computer connected to the internet, including yours, in the format 255.255.255.255. Each of the four blocks of numbers can be any value from 0 to 255. They can either be assigned permanently ("static IP") or per session ("dynamic IP"). Most ISPs assign them dynamically, ie when you connect to the internet. |
| iPod | The Apple Corporation's massively successful portable music player. See also iTunes. |
| ISA | (Industry Standard Architecture; pr."icer") A once-common type of PC expansion card, now obsolete; see also EISA, PCI. |
ISDN |
(Integrated Services Digital Network ) An early high speed (for its time) internet connection system mainly aimed at business, now largely obsolete. Requires a special type of modem called a Terminal Adaptor. |
| ISP | (Internet Service Provider) A company which provides a connection to the internet, or internet services. |
| ISTM | (It Seems To Me) Internet slang. |
| ISTR | (I Seem To Recall) Internet slang. |
| IT | (Information Technology) What computers are all about - using technology to manage information. The computer industry is often called the IT industry, and computer departments often refer to themselves as the IT department. |
| iTunes | The Apple Corporation's online music store, where you can download millions of music tracks to an iPod or computer - for a fee, of course. As with many Apple products, it is only compatible with Apple hardware and software. |
| Java | A programming language used to create small programs called applets, often to produce special effects on web pages. |
| Javascript | A set of program instructions, vaguely similar to Java but not actually related, written straight into the HTML of a webpage instead of as an applet. |
| Joe job, joe-job | Spam email apparently promoting a website that actually has nothing to do with it, intended to get the owner of the website in trouble. |
| JPEG, jpg | (Joint Picture [Experts] Group; pr. "jay-peg") A standard type of compressed graphics file, widely used on the WWW. Particularly good for photographs. See also compression. |
| Killer app | (Killer application) A program that is so obviously massively useful to someone that they will rush out and buy it immediately, and a computer to run it on. |
| Kbps | (KiloBits Per Second) A measure of speed of information flow, usually over a modem. A Kilobit is a thousand bits. See also bps, Mbps. |
| Kilobyte | Unit of measurement for pieces of information : actually 1024 Bytes (characters), but in practice almost always rounded down to 1000. Often written as just K, eg 250 K is 250 Kilobytes (250,000 bytes/characters - well not exactly, but close enough). See also Megabyte, Gigabyte. |
| LAN | (Local Area Network; pr."lan") A network of computers connected together, usually in a single department or building. See also WAN. |
| Laptop | A portable PC, with system unit, screen and keyboard crammed into one small package. They can do pretty much everything a desktop PC can do, but are substantially more expensive because of the extra miniaturisation required. Also called a notebook. |
| Laser printer, laserprinter | A high speed printer intended mainly for office use, usually better for text than graphics, especially in colour. |
| LCD | (Liquid Crystal Display) A type of computer screen, originally used only on laptops but now increasingly used for desktop PCs and even televisions. |
| Linux | A rival PC operating system to Microsoft Windows, but unlike Windows it is "open source", which means that anyone can create their own version of it without having to pay royalties, and requires a much less powerful computer. Initially required a lot of technical knowledge, but is rapidly being made much more user-friendly and may soon start to challenge Windows' dominance. |
| LMAO | (Laughing My Ass Off) Internet slang. |
| Lockup, locked up | An event which causes a computer to get stuck and refuse to do anything is a lockup. The computer is then said to be hung or locked up. |
| LOL | (Laughing Out Loud) Internet slang. |
