Macro

A very small program that can be embedded into documents and spreadsheets. When run, they echo a series of (sometimes lengthy) keypresses that they were designed to replace. A convenience tool. Macro viruses now exist which are spread by lots of people opening documents. So far they are all harmless and more annoying than bad for a system.

Mail Server

A computer which stores peoples E-mails for them to retrieve onto their own computer at a later date.

Mailing List

A list of E-mail addresses maintained by a server which have been registered because of a common interest, such as 'new computer hardware'. Every time one person sends a mail to the mailing list, the server makes a copy and sends it to every other address on the list.

Mb

Megabyte. 1024Kb, although for approximation this is rounded down to 1000 Kilobytes.

MHz

Megahertz. A measuring tool to show how fast a processor works.

Millennium Bug

Also known as the Y2K problem. A term used to describe the problems that may occur in operating systems at the turn of the century where a date is represented by 2 digits (ie. 98 and 99), and the two digits preceding that is hard coded. Thus, at the start of the Millennium, older computers may think it is 1900 rather than 2000. While sounding quite harmless, it has severe implications for businesses in particular those that create invoices and billing items.

MIME

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. A standard allowing people to send and recieve E-mails which have attachments such as sound files.

Mirror

Usually a server in one country that has a complete copy of the files of a server in another. The idea is that downloading files from a local mirror is quicker than connecting to the main server which may be on a different continent, although this is not always true.

MMO

The name given to Intel mobile systems. It contains the processor, chipset, and cache, and allows the machine to be upgraded quickly just by plugging in a different MMO Module.

MMX

Multimedia Extensions. Developed by Intel to improve the performance of Pentium processors mainly in the field of multimedia and games. All new Pentium processors (Pentium II, Pentium III) have MMX built-in, as do rival chips from AMD and Cyrix.

Modem

MOdulator DEModulator. A device which connects a computer to a phone line in order for the computer to communicate using the line.

Monitor

The computer screen.

Motherboard

The main circuit board (sometimes called the Main Board or System Board) which contains the processor and RAM. Add-on cards plug into the motherboard by means of a standard slot.

Mouse

A pointing device invented by Xerox used to move a cursor around on screen, making a computer much easier to control than with a keyboard alone.

MPEG

Motion Picture Experts Group. A standard for sound and video files found on the Internet. They are highly compressed but of a high quality too making them relatively quick to download but still be viewable.

Multimedia

The mixture of text, sound, animation and video to stimulate the senses and generally provide a pleasing experience when using a computer.

Multitasking

The act of doing more than one thing at once.