Glossary Definitions

Glossary of terms.

Hardware

HDD #: A three letter acronym for "Hard Disk Drive". Frequently shortened to "Hard Drive". This is your computer's long term memory. Another analogy is a filing cabinet. The hard drive is the computer's filing cabinet. The RAM is your desk space. To perform work, you take papers from your filing cabinet and work on them on your desktop. This is the same as opening a file on the hard drive and working on it on your computer's "Windows desktop". Most of the "Microsoft Windows" naming conventions were based on a filing cabinet, desktop metaphor so users would feel familiar with the artificial computer interface.
RAID #: (rād) Short for Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks, a category of disk drives that employ two or more drives in combination for fault tolerance and performance. RAID disk drives are used frequently on servers but aren't generally necessary for personal computers.
RAM #: Three letter acronym standing for "Random Access Memory". This is your computer's equivalent of Short Term Memory. All of your computer's normal work takes place in RAM. When you turn off the computer, anything stored in the RAM disappears. When you turn on your computer, it needs to rebuild it's memory in RAM before you can do any work. One of the reasons it takes so long for a computer to start.

VPN #: Short for virtual private network, a network that is constructed by using public wires to connect nodes. For example, there are a number of systems that enable you to create networks using the Internet as the medium for transporting data. These systems use encryption and other security mechanisms to ensure that only authorized users can access the network and that the data cannot be intercepted.

Windows System Tray #: The collection of icons usually at the bottom right of the start (task) bar. Contains a list of configurable background running system applications.