The other day I was going through some stuff, and I came across my old IBM Thinkpad 600E. The 600E is a relatively small 1999-era laptop, which was considered a solid and reliable business machine in its day. I had purchased it on eBay around 2003 as a second computer and as my first laptop. […]
A thumb drive is a portable data storage device. In computer parlance, it is known as a USB flash drive, but it can be known by a variety of mix and match descriptive names such as USB key, USB memory key, key drive, flash key, compact flash key, or compact flash drive.
The names come from […]
Most home users can store all of their data on the hard drive that comes with the computer. The size of today’s hard drives are easily large enough to store your normal data files, like documents and photos. The only time that storage becomes an issue is when you start saving video, or large collections […]
Most homes have a single connection to the Internet, which is shared by all of the computers in the home. This process is made possible by an additional piece of hardware called a router. Technically, a router is a more general term which applies to specialized computer devices which control all Internet traffic at an […]
A port on a computer is a socket for a specific type of plug, used to connect components or peripheral devices. On early models of computers, each peripheral device had its own port: an AT keyboard port, a serial port for a mouse or modem, a parallel port for a printer, a video port for […]
The hard disk drive (abbreviated HDD), more commonly called the hard disk or hard drive, is the device that stores the operating system, your software, and your data files. It is a magnetic medium, as opposed to the optical media of CDs and DVDs. The hard disk is the most complicated mechanical device in the […]
Random access memory, abbreviated and pronounced RAM, is the component of a computer that holds whatever the computer is thinking about right now. It is sometimes referred to simply as memory, or volatile memory, because it is lost when the computer is turned off. In humans, RAM is like short-term memory. For example, someone tells […]
The central processing unit, almost always abbreviated and pronounced CPU, is the brains of the computer. It is a small chip, about the size of a matchbook, black in color, attached flat on the motherboard. It does all of the mind-numbing computations, and it controls the other components. It is the CPU that distinguishes the […]
The motherboard is the printed circuit board that serves as the central highway that connects all of the other internal components of the computer. On a desktop computer it is about the size of a magazine and usually green or yellow in color. While the CPU is considered to be the brains of the computer, […]
Hardware is the term used to describe the individual components that make up a computer, computer system, or computer network. It refers to the physical pieces of equipment, in contrast to software, which is the sets of instructions that run a computer. In general, a desktop computer system consists of the hardware in the case […]