Glossary

Sony VAIO Desktop User Guide

 

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PC Card

A PCMCIA card. The term PC Card is more widely used than PCMCIA. See PCMCIA.

 

 

PCMCIA

PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) is the name of the

 

group that produced the specification for the credit card-sized plug-in boards for laptop

 

computers. The cards used to be called PCMCIA cards, but as this was rather

 

unpronounceable, these cards are now termed PC cards. An example of a PC card is a credit

 

card-sized modem.

 

 

Pixel

A pixel (Picture Element) is a part of your screen. Your screen is made up of thousands of

 

pixels, enabling you to see colours and pictures on it. The more pixels, the higher the

 

resolution and the better the image quality.

 

 

Processor

The processor is the brains of the computer; it processes the instructions of your system’s

 

programs. The processor is also known as the CPU or microprocessor and can be found on

 

the motherboard (see this word) of your computer.

 

 

Product recovery CD-ROM

The product recovery CD-ROMs include the application recovery CD-ROM and the system

 

recovery CD-ROM(s)

 

 

PS/2

A type of mouse or keyboard port.

 

 

PSTN

PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) refers to the plain old telephone service, the

 

national telecommunication networks implementing voice transmission by using analog

 

signals.

 

 

RAM

Short for Random Access Memory, the memory used to run programs and store data in

 

current use. RAM is the fastest kind of memory to read from and write to. Information stored

 

in RAM is lost when you turn off the computer. The higher the RAM capacity, the faster your

 

current data can be processed.

 

 

Resolution

The degree of sharpness and clarity of an image. Resolution is expressed in pixels. Frequent

 

computer screen resolutions are 640 x 480 pixels (VGA resolution; appropriate for a 14-inch

 

screen), 800 x 600 (appropriate for a 15-inch screen), 1,024 by 768 (appropriate for a 17-inch

 

screen), and 1,280 by 1,024. LCD displays usually use a higher resolution than a CRT of the

 

same size.

 

 

RGB signal cable

RGB stands for Red, Green, Blue. A cable that requires separate transmission types for the

 

three colours on the display.

 

 

SDRAM

Synchronous DRAM is a kind of dynamic random access memory running at a much higher

 

clock speed than regular memory.