Computer/Technical Jargon

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AAC: Advanced Audio Coding. A lossy digital audio format used mainly by Apple and the iPod and cell-phones. AAC was developed in part by the original makers of the MP3 and Dolby Labs as it was designed to be the next generation of the MP3 format. It never became that in part because of intense competition from Microsoft's own digital audio format WMA. See the section on MP3's for a thorough explination of these types of digital audio. AAC is officially MPEG-2 Layer 7 or MPEG-4 Layer 3. All things being equal, the sound quality is better than MP3's and WMA, but equivalent to Ogg Vorbis.

AGP: Accelerated Graphics Port. A slot designed exclusively for the video card. AGP operates at 66, 133, 266, and 533 MHz. AGP has been replaced by PCI Express, most new motherboards do not even support AGP.

Alpha: The first letter of the Greek alphabet. This is the first stage of testing. The program is not complete and is still being developed. All testing is done by the programmers on their computers. Once the program has enough features, it will be sent out to beta testers. Please note that although not all programmers use alpha and beta terminology correctly. The next stage of testing is called Beta.

Analog: Something that is infinate, uncountable. The real world is analog. Your thermostat may say 72 degrees, but in reality it is probably not exactly 72 degrees. It may 72.1 or 72.14 or 72.149 or so on. What you see is limited to how precise the instrument can measure. Since the real world is analog, why is digital audio, video, or whatever better? Because analog is prone to interference and more difficult to store and transmit. With digital, its all or nothing and thus storage and transmission is easy.

Apple: The name of the computer company started by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Apple makes the MacIntosh computers, usually called Macs today, the industry standard iPod, and iPhone. Apple also created the software QuickTime.

ATA: Advanced Technology Attachment. A popular drive interface, usually mistakenly called IDE. At first, ATA didn't support CD's and required the CPU to oversee all drive operation. Later on, ATA added support for any drive using a set of instructions already common on the SCSI interface called ATAPI. Drives were also allowed to put data into memory without the CPU by a feature called Direct Memory Access, or DMA, and Ultra DMA, or UDMA. This allowed faster drive speeds, which are often represented as a number after UDMA. For instance, UDMA 133 means the drive can transfer data 133 MB/sec. The old ATA standard, called PATA (see below) allows two drives per cable. So that the computer can differentiate between the two, one drive on the cable is called master and the other slave. Older drives sometimes wanted to be a master or slave, but other than that, it is just a way for the computer to distuingish between drives. Currently, the standard has evolved to a serial interface called SATA, which allows faster data transfers and smaller cables. The old interface was parallel and called PATA. The serial interface only allows one drive per cable. PATA cables can be 40-pin or 80-pin and SATA cables are 7-pin. See also IDE, SATA, PATA, and SCSI to help you fully understand ATA.

ATAPI: Advanced Technology Attachment Packet Interface. At first, CD drives and Tape drives weren't supported by the existing interfaces, SCSI and ATA. Despite the similarities in the name, ATAPI first appeared on SCSI devices, thus all early CD drives were external or SCSI. ATAPI was later moved over to ATA drives. What ATAPI does is provide a common set of instructions that devices must adhear too. Thus, if your interface supports ATAPI it can support any device. This does not mean that SCSI drives are interchangeable with ATA drives. ATAPI is like the what of the whole process: what do you want me to do? SCSI and ATA are like the how: how do you want me to send the data? Of course, it isn't that simple, but should help you understand. With ATAPI, you can connect hard drives, CD's, scanners, anything at all. Some older scanners used the SCSI interface. However, today ATAPI is only used for drives, both internal and external.

Athlon: The retired name of AMD's flagship line of CPU's. The new name of AMD's flagship CPU's is Phenom

Automaton: A machine that given a specific input will produce a specific output. This can be a number of things from toys to calculators to computers to robots. Granted, some automatons are more complex than others. But, no mater what, the basic principle from the basic automaton, like a toy, applies to complex automatons, like a computer. Sometimes called a finate state machine or finate automaton.

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