Computer/Technical Jargon

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Mainboard: A gender-neutral term for motherboard.

Malware: Short for malicious software. This is a broad term to cover software that produces adverse affects to your computer. This includes spyware, viruses, worms, rootkits, trojan horses, dialers, key loggers, spambots, and zombies. This also includes security exploits, programs designed to attack a known vulnerability. Malware can get on your computer by e-mail (sometimes by someone you know; however, a new scam is to imitate return-to-sender e-mail messages), packaged with free downloads, on CD's (sometimes purposefully by the company as in the case Sony Music's rootkit), sharing infected disks, and other ways.

Master: A way of identifying a PATA disk drive. See slave for a complete desciption of this concept.

Memory: Something that holds, or remembers, its on or off state after it is set. Specific sequences of on or off produce data. Common memory components include transistors-based (such as RAM), magnentic devices (such as floppy disks), and optical devices (such as CD's). Anything that remembers its state is memory. What is often thought as computer memory is RAM. However, that is hardly the only form of memory in a computer. Operating Systems use the hard drive to store data from RAM when more space is needed in RAM. It stores this memory in a page file. All computers have specialized memory called cache to improve performance.

MIMO: Multiple-In Multiple-Out. Wireless standard where you can use multiple antennas and multiple connections to speed up the connection and increase range. However, a side effect is non-MIMO devices can suffer interference from nearby MIMO devices and slow down or even not work altogether. MIMO is in the next generation of the Wi-Fi standard and called 802.11n. Devices with pre-802.11n or draft 802.11n may not work with the final 802.11n specification.

Motherboard: This is like the mothership of a computer. The motherboard holds the chipset, BIOS, add-on cards, memory slots, and house the CPU. All new motherboards have some ports, sound, and drive connectors. The motherboard may also have lots of other goodies on it to, such as video. The motherboard has all the wiring between components to make everything work together. The motherboard also supplies power to all the components except disk drives and certain add-on devices. Just about video cards now need more power than the motherboard can supply. Better quality motherboards supply cleaner power for greater stability and performance. In general, the cheaper the computer, the more stuff is on the motherboard to save costs. This is because add-on cards are more expensive. However, for most components, if it is on the motherboard, the performance is much less than if it was on an add-on card. Motherboards also have certain design specifications. Note that sometimes the gender neutral terms mainboard or system board may be used, even though just about everyone says motherboard.

MP3: Short for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3. This is the most popular digital audio format thanks to in large part the old (and illegal) Napster. CD's introduced digital audio. Although sound is analog, there are many limits on the usuability and durability of analog storage devices. Cassette tapes and 8-tracks develop a faint hiss over time. Furthermore, get too close to a magnet and there goes your music. Vinyl records have to be cleaned and the needles have to be kept in top shape. Plus, vinyl isn't portable. CD's don't develop hissing and are small. And since the data is in digital form, you can do stuff you couldn't do with tapes or records, like instantly jump to a new track. All digital data is stored in bits. MP3's take this data and, using various techniques, compress it. MP3's are lossy, that is to say they discard some audio data. To most people, the audio discarded is not noticable. The audio is compressed at various levels of bit-rates. All you really need to know about bit-rates is that lower is smaller and lower quality. Also remember that different compressed audio formats can use less bit-rates for the same quality. See the section on digital audio.

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