Computers Made Simple tries to demystify and explain the wonderful world of computers. Very often, the wall between adopting new technology and simply dreaming about it, is based on semantics. Just as communication with someone from another country is often hampered by language, such is the case with technology. Early adopters communicate using buzzwords, while late-comers are left out of the conversation. We’re here to get you up to speed on the ‘lingo’.

1. CPU – Nothing too complicated here. The CPU or Central Processing Unit is the brain in your computer. Think Intel or AMD, silicone and transistors. The CPU, for the most part, decides the speed with which you accomplish your work. It is the thinking unit that controls everything that happens in a computer. Old CPUs had one brain or core while the new ones have at least two, sometimes four and, infrequently, even more. Two heads, or more, are better than one, right?

2. Memory vs. Storage – Memory or RAM (Random Access Memory) is what you are thinking about right now. Your brain can sort of stuff, think about many things at once and interact with everything that goes on in your life. When you go to sleep, your thinking process stops. When you shut your computer off, the RAM is deactivated. Everything that was in RAM, such as that Word document for school, is lost UNLESS you have saved it to your hard drive or flash drive. Storage is your memories. Things you did when you were a child are stored in your memories, just as things you wrote last week are stored on a hard drive. Memory is right now, storage is back then. Once you put something into storage, you can retrieve it even after you shut your computer down. If something is in RAM and you haven’t saved it, you will never get it back.

3. Megabyte/gigabyte/terabyte  etc. –  How big is your closet? Usually, closets are measured in square feet or square meters. Computers tend to measure things in bytes. Without getting into bytes, suffice it to say that a byte is a way of measuring information. The more bytes you have for RAM or for storage makes a huge difference in the computing world. My first real computer had a 250 megabyte hard drive and 2 megabytes of RAM. Since it had a single core CPU and used Windows 3.1, it was slow as molasses. But, it did just about everything that one could do on a computer at that time. These days, storage is measured in gigabytes (something like a billion bytes) or terabytes (a trillion bytes). Even RAM these days is measured in gigabytes. These terms are simply the size of something. An MP3, for instance, could be 5 megabytes in size while a DVD movie might be 4, 8 or more gigabytes in size.

4. Hz or Hertz – You’ll see Hz in many computer ads. If you think of Hz in terms of speed or cycles per second, it might make sense. The higher the Hz, the faster the computer. Hz is also measured in mega and giga terms. A laptop might chug along at 1.6 GHz and be perfectly fine for email and Internet work. A new desktop might race along at 3 or 4 GHz. A GHz is a billion cycles per second. Gamers and other hi-tech know-it-alls will go for the highest GHz they can. The average user will be fine with any computer that hovers around 2GHz. You can pretty much ignore this figure but this explains what it means.

5. Hard drives/SSDs – The older hard drives were similar to a record player from days gone by. They had arms and platters and all of the information was stored on whirling disks of magnetic material. These are still in use today, virtually every computer made has one or more of these. This style of hard drive is relatively cheap to make but they are susceptible to knocks and drops. Laptops that are dropped are usually OK except for their hard drives. Once the arm hits the platter, the drive is useless. Enter the SSD. An SSD, or Solid State Drive, has no moving parts. Theoretically they are impervious to physical damage. Flash drives, which use the same technology, have been frozen, hammered and heated and continue to function after all of that. SSDs are faster, too. They don’t use mechanical devices to write or retrieve information. There are no spinning disks, either, so they use much less power. Faster, quieter and lower power consumption make them very attractive. The price, however, is high at this point. As time goes by, the price will drop, I’m sure.

6. Optical Drives – anything that isn’t a hard drive or an SSD is usually a DVD/Blu Ray or CD drive. These are named optical drives because they use a laser to read and write to the plastic disks. The laser is an optical process, hence the name. Ignore the speed ratings when you are looking at these drives. All optical products work better when written at slower speeds. 8X is perfect for these, despite the fact that some drives advertise much higher speeds.

7. SATA – SATA is simply a way that a computer connects to a drive. Drive connectors have gone from ATA (or PATA) through SCSI to SATA, each one being faster than the last, in most cases. SATA has gone through a few upgrades so you might see SATA 1 or SATA 2 but that doesn’t really matter to most users. SATA means Serial ATA while ATA defines a standard. A standard is a generally agreed upon way of making something work. Remember Sony Beta vs. VHS? That was a war of standards. SATA can be safely ignored but now you know what it means, at least.

8. LCD/LED – LCD or Liquid Crystal displays are now being replaced by LED or Light Emitting Diode displays. LCDs use more power and create heat, although they are more efficient than the old-style CRT displays from years ago. CRT means Cathode Ray Tube, something that hadn’t changed since the early days of television. Look for an LED display these days for low power consumption AND long life. LEDs last for a very long time. Remember your old stereo with the little red lights on it? Those were LEDs. Do they still work? Now you know what I mean.

9. Cooling/liquid cooling – The new CPUs run very, very hot. You can cook on any modern CPU. Without air or liquid cooling, a CPU will burn up in a matter of seconds. The problem with air cooling is that it’s loud. In order to cool a monster CPU while it crunches numbers, you’d need a fan the size of a dinner plate, more or less. That would make a lot of noise, right? Liquid cooling is quiet and extremely efficient…as long as it doesn’t leak. Hard core gamers and power users tend to use pipes and radiators filled with liquid to cool their CPUs. You and I can continue with our air cooling for now, thank you very much.

10. Overclocking – Think of overclocking the same way you think of an athlete on steroids. A CPU that is overclocked has more power sent to it than normal and it is asked to work at a faster speed. More power and faster speed creates heat which must be cooled with a liquid. Once a CPU is overclocked, two things can happen. First, the warranty is shot and, second, the computer may become unstable. On the other hand, if you remember what I said about GHz and CPUs, anyone who buys a 2GHz CPU and overclocks it to 2.5/3 GHz (or more) is getting something faster for less money. You can see how this would be attractive to someone, even if it risks ruining the warranty.

There you have ten terms that you will be more comfortable with in the future. I hope you could figure all this out. Comments and questions are welcome.

Thanks for reading!