Bits'n'Bytes

As heard on CJCD

Episode 38

Because computers seem to develop so quickly, we're all constantly bombarded with a thousand different acronyms. Quite often a customer will come to me and ask "What the heck does this stand for?" So, for the next couple of weeks, I'm going to go over some of the many acronyms you'll come across while working with your computer. If you memorize some of these acronyms and use them in conversation, your co-workers will think you're well up on computer technology, or they'll punch you in the head. Please don't hold me responsible.

I think I may have mentioned before that FAT stands for File Allocation Table and NTFS stands for New Technology File System. These are both methods your operating system uses to keep track of the files on your hard drive. Your hard drive might be connected to your computer with an IDE cable, which is for Integrated Drive Electronics cable, which is also known as a PATA cable - Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment - or it could be connected with a newer and faster SATA cable, which is for Serial Advanced Technology Attachment.

The work in gets done by your CPU, but it's helped by your RAM, or random access memory. Constant advancements in memory architecture make this acronym category change a lot. There's SDRAM - Synchronous Dynamic RAM, there's DDR RAM, which is Double Density Rate RAM and there's DDR2 RAM - Double density times 2. Plus, each of these different types of RAM can run at a bunch of different speeds, making it even tougher to keep track of.

To be able to see stuff on your monitor, you need a video card. Although there were some earlier acronyms for these, the most common now are PCI - for Peripheral Component Interconnect, AGP - for Accelerated Graphics Port which is up to eight times faster than PCI. Then there's PCIe or PCI express, which is up to 16 times faster than the original PCI cards.

Well, I think that's a big enough dose for this week.

Stay tuned next week when I go over some more of these computer acronyms.

I’m Computer Dave, thanks for your time.