Accelerator

An expansion card with a built-in processor designed to speed up a particular task (such as playing sounds or drawing graphics) by removing the burden from the CPU.

Access Provider

Another name for an ISP (Internet Service Provider). A company which provides access to services such as the Internet through dial-up and permanent connections.

Active X

A Microsoft technology used on the Internet. Basically they make web pages more "active". For example you can view a Word document in a space on the Web page.

AGP

Accelerated Graphics Port. A type of connector on a motherboard designed specifically for graphics cards. Currently the industry standard is AGP 2x, but AGP 4x is just around the corner...

Analogue

An analogue signal uses variable voltages to represent the value, rather than a digital signal which just uses a series of zeros and ones (Binary)

Anonymous FTP

A way of obtaining files from a computer on the Internet whilst not needing an actual account. Usernames are ususally 'anonymous' with the password being an E-Mail address.

Anorak

A reference to someone who eats sleeps and breathes computers and computer technology. Rather unkind and stereotypical.

ANSI

American National Standards Institute. A voluntary organisation based in the USA who define the standards for the rest of the industry to adhere to.

Anti-Virus

A piece of software specifically designed to hunt viruses that might have been introduced into a PC system and remove them, without disturbing any of the original data. Examples are Sophos Sweep and McAffee VirusScan.

APM

Advanced Power Management. A tool that monitors power usage on laptops and desktops, and shut down items that are not being used (for example powering down the PC into suspend mode after it has not been used for a certain amount of time)

Archive

A term used to describe a backup copy of some data, normally for safety reasons so that if data is lost, it can be restored from the backup copy.

ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A numerical way of representing letters, numbers and characters. For example ASCII value 32 is a space character.

ATAPI

Advanced Technology Attachment Packet Interface. A standard way for PCs to access devices such as CD-Rom drives, providing the CD-Rom drive is ATAPI compatible.

ATX

A design of motherboard introduced by Intel. Supports APM and other features such as AGP.