Computer/Technical Jargon

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Hard Drive: A non-removable storage device. It is called a hard drive because the first removable disks were big and floppy, but these were not. They were hard, thus hard drive. Most hard drives uses magnetic charges to represent data. These hard drives have moving parts, which are always slower than components without moving parts and die earlier than other non-moving parts. The main limitation in hard drive speed is related to the motors and other moving parts. There are also hard drives that are basicly big Flash drives called Solid State Drives, or SSD. These cost a lot more than traditional hard drives and are not faster, but they use significantly less power. Modern operating systems use the hard drive as extra memory with a page file also called a swap file and vitual memory. The OS, when it needs more memory, will take memory from RAM and write it to the page file, and if it needs to restore some memory from the page file. The more memory a computer has, the less often it has to go to the slow hard drive, thus more memory will greatly improve performance. Hard drive capacity is measured by a base-10, decimal, system instead of the base-2 binary numbering system. This is done mostly to make it seem like you are getting more capacity than you really are. Since all data is represented by a 0 or 1 at some time, the real capacity is about 7% less than what is stated. See Greek prefixes.

Hertz: The number of osciallations in a wave per minute, denoted with a "H". This applies to any wave, whether it is a radio wave, ocean wave, and sound wave. In the digital world, a wave is created as a timing signal. For example, a digital clock uses a 60 Hertz wave to know when each second is. The clock reads a second a specific level on the wave, such as the peak of the wave. Since the wave is 60 Hertz, there are 60 osciallations per minute, or one every second. All computers use this timing signal, but at a much faster pace. See the Greek prefixes section. Traditionally, data was transferred only once per osciallation. Now, data is sometimes transferred two to five times per osciallation. When the wave reaches a certain level, data is transfered.

Hexadecimal: A number system using sixteen numbers. Since we do not have numbers beyond 9, letters are used. A is 10, B is 11, C is 12, D is 13, E is 14, and F is 15. Our decimal numbering uses ten numbers, 0 to 9. Hexadecimal allows for very easy conversion between it and binary. And since hexadecimal is easier to read and shorter than binary, it is used often in computers. Sometimes, to indicate a number is hexadecimal there will be a 0x before the number and sometimes (but not always) a h after. Such as 0xA99122F0h.

HDCP: High-Definition Content Protection. A flag put into pure digital signals that prevents any copies. Blu-Ray discs may require a HDCP compliant HDTV to display the best picture. Please note that older computer video cards are not HDCP compliant, meaning they may not be able of playing HD DVD or Blu-Ray movies through them. Crippling the picture on non-HDCP compliant devices has not yet been implemented because there are still older HDTV's being used before HDCP was standardized.

HD DVD: A next generation of DVD's that was competing with Blu-Ray but now retired. HD DVD can also put a DVD movie and HD DVD movie on the same disc or same side. HD DVD was created by Toshiba and the DVD forum. The disc standard was created because DVD's do not have enough space to hold HD quality movies. HD DVD players and movies are no longer being made. In order for a player to be HD DVD compliant, it must be able utilize certain very-high interactivity requirements including an option for picture-in-picture, internet interactivity, internet extras downloads, persistent memory to hold bookmarks in the like, and simple but dynamic menus.

HDMI: High Definition Multimedia Interface. This is an all-digital interface just like DVI, but the difference is HDMI carries the sound and has a different adapter. Other than that, it is the exact same as DVI. Newer computers will replace the DVI connector with the HDMI to support today's HDTV's. The newest HDMI standard supports full uncompressed audio and video.

Hot-Swap: The ability to disconnecting or reconnect a device or a device's cable without having to power down the system. In computers, the Operating System will recognize the device as soon as it is connected and install the drivers needed (if it can). Sometimes called other things beginning with hot, such as hot-plugable.

HTML: HyperText Markup Language. A just-in-time programming language used to display web pages. HTML standards are defined and created by the W3C. HTML has several revisions, HTML 2.0/3.2/4.0/4.1 and XHTML 1.0 Strict/1.0 Transitional/1.0 Frameset/1.1. Technically, if the page is coded incorrectly, the browser should not render the page properly. In reality, most browsers are very forgiving. Some browsers, like Internet Explorer, do not render advanced features correctly even if the code is right. Look at the icons below the sidebar. Notice that one W3C XHTML 1.1 with a check sign. Click on it. You'll notice that ever page for Techs-on-Call is XHTML 1.1 compliant. However, the sad fact is very few pages are compliant with whatever standard is used. To see what standard the HTML page is saying it uses, right-click anywhere there is text and click "View Source" or similar. Near the top, look for a line that begins with <!DOCTYPE. Somewhere on that line you see what version of HTML is being used. XHTML is a mixture of XML and HTML.

HT technology: See Hyper Threading.

Hub: A device that allows connecting multiple computer. A hub has a specific speed limit for all connections, so a lot of network traffic will slow down all traffic through the hub. See also switch. A hub can also be a device for connecting several other devices. Such hubs usually have the name of the device you can connect, such as USB hub. A network hub should not be used because what it does is take a signal it receives and rebroadcasts it on every wire connected, including the one that sent it. This greatly slows down network traffic.

Hyper Threading: Developed by Intel, this technology is designed to mimic dual-core CPU's. Dual-core CPU's multitask much better because the OS has to use less time switch processes and threads. Hyper Threading reduces the time it takes you to switch programs. The result is, in fact, a computer that seems to be faster during heavy CPU or disk load. However, in application overall performance actually decreases. In some CPU-intensive applications, like web servers, hyper-threading can drastically reduce performance. This technology is all but dead. See also core, processes, and threads.

Hyper Transport: Developed in part by AMD, this is a method to speed up communication between the CPU and peripherals, including memory. The result is much greater CPU performance. Hyper transport also allows other devices to easily work in conjunction with the CPU.

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