Here you find explanation for computer terms.

Our dictionary is sorted alphabetically so you can easily find the words you are looking for.




Access Time
Time (indicated in millisenconds) a storage medium needs to find requested data. The time is dependent on the technical procedure of the medium as well as on the duration the writing/reading head needs for mechanical adjustment.


Account
Mostly consisting of username and password to access services from a service provider. An e-mail account lets the registered user access the providers' e-mail services.


Acrobat
The standard for displaying PDF documents, developed by Adobe. The free Acrobat reader displays PDF documents, the Acrobat Writer can also produce them.


Active X
A standard for dynamical internet applications running only in the Internet Explorer browser.


ADB
Apple Desktop Bus. Old interface at Apple-Computers, to connect a keyboard or mouse. Up to seven devices can be connected this way. New Apple computers only use USB and Firewire connection.


Adapter
Intermediate piece for devices with different interfaces.


ADSL
See DSL


Ad Ware
Ad-Ware ist mostly free software, which is financed by displaying advertisement inside the program.


AGP
The AGP interface is on some, older mainboards the interface for the graphics board.


Alphachannel
A special channel in image-editing software to save masks on specific parts of the image.


AMD
Advanced Micro Devices, a processor manufacturer for Windows PCs.


Amiga
Multimedia homecomputer from Commodore, developed in the early 1980s until the late 1990s. The first Amiga computers could display 4096 colors at the same time. Amiga computers were not only used for gaming, but also for professional image and video editing.


ANSI
American National Standards Institute. The ANSI character set is an enhancement of the ASCII standard and is used on Windows and Linux systems.


Antialiasing
A computer calculation, to smoothen hard edges in low-resolution images.


Apple
The Apple company startet in the late 1970s building its famous computers. The Mac computers were the first user-friendly systems to be controlled by a mouse with a desktop environment containing folders, files and a trashcan. Today, Apple not only sells computers but also developed the iPod mp3-player.


Apple Events
A function to let software communicate with each other. Apple programs which support the Apple Events, can run functions in other programs.


AppleScript
An Apple programming language for scripts and small programs. It can also be used to remote control other software, for example to start a file in the quicktime player.


Applet
Please read Java.


Application
A software program like Word, Excel or Paintshop Pro.


Aqua
The MacOS X user interface with windows, icons, folders and the trashcan.


AREXX
Amiga programming language which supports data exchange between different applications.


ARPAnet
Advanced Research Projects Agency. In the 1960s developed military network, which was the predecessor of the internet.


ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange - a normed text format to exchange data in a standardized way between different operating systems.


Athlon
A CPU from AMD.


ATRAC
Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding - A system to compress digital audio data. The ATRAC format is used to store music and sounds on Mini-Disks.


Attachment
Files, images or documents attached to an email.


Autoresponder
An autoresponder is an automatically produced reply-email to incoming mails: This way, senders can be informed of vacation or get a note, that the email was received.