Glossary

Sony VAIO Desktop User Guide

 

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Term

Definition

 

 

LCD

Short for Liquid Crystal Display. Flat display technology using liquid crystals (and light

 

polarisation) to provide sharp, flicker-free images on a screen comprised of millions of tiny

 

cells. Colour can be produced by two basic techniques. Passive matrix is the less expensive of

 

the two technologies. The active matrix technology (or TFT) produces better quality but is

 

also more expensive.

 

 

LED

Short for Light-Emitting Diode. A semiconductor device that lights up when electricity passes

 

through it.

 

 

MAPI

Short for Messaging Application Program Interface. A Microsoft Windows interface

 

enabling you to send e-mail messages. It allows e-mail access and distribution among

 

applications. MAPI-compatible applications include a Send Mail or Send in the File menu of

 

the application.

 

 

maximum RAM

The maximum amount of RAM that your computer can contain. Once this amount is

 

reached, you can no longer add additional RAM to your computer.

 

 

Motherboard

The motherboard is the main circuit board inside your computer. It holds the CPU, the BIOS,

 

the memory and so on.

 

 

MPEG

MPEG or Moving Pictures Experts Group is a standard for audio-visual compression of video

 

sequences. MPEG achieves high compression rates by storing only the changes from one

 

frame to another. The decrease in data is generally imperceptible to the human eye.

 

MPEG-1 was developed for digital storage of video and audio data on CD-ROM. MPEG-2

 

achieves better image and audio quality and is more targeted to TV broadcasting and DVD.

 

 

Operating system

The operating system is software that manages all the other programs in a computer. It

 

defines how the computer reads and writes information to its disks (and other hardware).

 

Windows 2000, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows XP Professional and Windows XP

 

Home Edition are examples of operating systems found on VAIOs.