Bits and bytes: units of data measurement. One bit is equivalent to a single binary 1 or 0. A byte is 8 bits. A kilobyte (Kb) is 1,024 bytes. A megabyte (Mb) is over a million bytes. And a gigabyte (Gb) is over a billion bytes. Phew.
CD-ROM: looks just like a standard CD but holds an awful lot of digital data (650 Mb), including text, animation, graphics, film and sound. Unfortunately, you can only ''read'' or copy data from a CD-ROM (Read Only Memory); you can't put anything on to it.
Floppy disk: old-fashioned plastic square which stores a small amount of data (1.44 Mb). Your PC can copy data on to a floppy disk. But not much.
Graphics card (video controller): an internal circuitboard dedicated to making your PC colourful. A 3D card is essential for modern games. Especially those of the Lara Croft variety.
Hard disk: like a floppy disk only harder and much bigger. It lives inside your PC box and stores all your information. Its capacity is measured in those massive Gbs.
Keyboard: like a typewriter, only connected to your PC.
Modem: a device which enables digital signals from your PC to be sent down the telephone line, and vice versa. Essential to get connected to the Internet. Therefore essential.
Monitor: like a high resolution TV only connected to your PC.
Motherboard: a big circuitboard at the heart of your PC. Your processor, graphics card and sound card are all plugged into it.
Mouse: hand-held slidy clicky thing.
PC: personal computer. As opposed to an impersonal one.
Pipeline Burst Cache: quote: ''This is a form of L2 cache that uses pipelining to speed data access by being able to feed data to the CPU at the same time it pulls data from memory. The burst mode also allows the cache to fetch additional data from main memory before the CPU requests it.'' Quite. Just make sure you get some.
Printer: inkjets are cheap and can print in colour; lasers are better and faster but print in black-and-white only.
Processor (or CPU): the brainy chip which does all the thinking. You will certainly want a Pentium (fast), possibly a Pentium MMX (fast and good for games) and probably a Pentium II (new, very fast and fully upgradeable). A processor's speed is measured in MHz - look for any number over 166.
RAM: Random Access Memory. Makes your programmes work. Comes in lots of flavours - SD RAM is tastiest. Look for 32 Mb or more. Don't settle for 16 Mb.
Scanner: machine which digitises pictures and gets them on to your PC.
Sound card: like a graphics card only dedicated to making your PC noisy. Make yours a SoundBlaster.
Speakers: computer speakers are almost universally rubbish. Chuck them out and plug your PC into your stereo.
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