I’m fortunate enough to be involved in the industry so many of these are known to me, however when my friend asked what RAM was I had an ‘aha’ moment and thought why not spread the word and share what I know. Below are a few TLA’s (three letter acronyms) explained, we have tired to take the confusion out of a few ICT terms.
LCD – liquid crystal display this is simply a thin, flat panel that uses liquid crystal cells that change reflectivity in an applied electric field. It can be used to display text, images, and moving pictures. Its uses include monitors for computers, televisions, and instrument panels to mention just a few.
LED light-emitting diode, this one is a little harder to explain but here goes: – it is a semiconductor light source. WOW – and what is that??? This semiconductor or diode allows current/electricity to travel in one direction only. When a current/electricity is run through the diode it emits photons, “units” of light.
RAM Random-access memory is a type of computer information/data storage that provides much faster access than your Hard Disk Drive. It allows stored information to be accessed in any order (i.e., at random). Which, trust me, makes your life so much easier. You want to be able to access Facebook, your Outlook quickly, check figures in a spreadsheet while you write a letter to your client. RAM allows all of this to happen. So you can retrieve any piece of data constantly regardless of its physical location and whether or not it is related to the previous piece of data.
HDD Hard disk drive, by the book this means a computer device which stores digitally encoded data??? Hmm, ok so in other words, the mother load, the all important hub, and where everything you do on your computer gets translated into 0100011101010101 – computer speak.
GB Gigabyte, a unit of information used. It is important to know how many your computer has, because it will let you know what your computer’s storage capacity is and how fast and powerful your computer is. More GB is better. Remember RAM and HDD are different types of memory; both will have a GB capacity. You need more HDD than RAM.
CPU Central Processing Unit or the processor is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, and is the primary element carrying out the computer’s functions. Often in my frustration I blame my computer, when actually it is just following a command – your command. The processor reads the computer speak 0101010100001101001010, and translates into what you see on the screen.
App Application this is a program or group of programs designed for you – the end-user. Applications software (also called end-user programs) includes database programs, word processors, and spreadsheets. They provide many of the functions you use everyday.
