21
Glossary
Terms in this Glossary are provided for informational purposes only and may or may not describe features included with
your particular computer.
A
AC — Alternating Current — The form of electricity that powers your computer when you plug the AC adapter power cable
in to an electrical outlet.
ACPI — Advanced Configuration and Power Interface — A power management specification that enables Microsoft
®
Windows
®
operating systems to put a computer in standby or hibernate mode to conserve the amount of electrical power
allocated to each device attached to the computer.
AGP — Accelerated Graphics Port — A dedicated graphics port that allows system memory to be used for video related
tasks. AGP delivers a smooth, true-color video image because of the faster interface between the video circuitry and the
computer memory.
AHCI — Advanced Host Controller Interface — An interface for a SATA hard drive Host Controller which allows the storage
driver to enable technologies such as Native Command Queuing (NCQ) and hot plug.
ALS — Ambient Light Sensor — A feature that helps to control display brightness.
antivirus software — A program designed to identify, quarantine, and/or delete viruses from your computer.
Armored Protection System (APS) – The ruggedization technology that combines material selection, mechanical, thermal
and structural designs and third party military testing to create highly rugged systems.
ASF — Alert Standards Format — A standard to define a mechanism for reporting hardware and software alerts to a
management console. ASF is designed to be platform- and operating system independent.
B
battery life span — The length of time (years) during which a portable computer battery is able to be depleted and
recharged.
battery operating time — The length of time (minutes or hours) that a portable computer battery powers the computer.
BIOS — Basic Input/Output System — A program (or utility) that serves as an interface between the computer hardware
and the operating system. Unless you understand what effect these settings have on the computer, do not change them.
Also referred to as system setup.
bit — The smallest unit of data interpreted by your computer.
Bluetooth
®
wireless technology — A wireless technology standard for short-range (9 m [29 feet]) networking devices that
allows for enabled devices to automatically recognize each other.
boot sequence — Specifies the order of the devices from which the computer attempts to boot.
bootable media — A CD, DVD, or floppy disk that you can use to start your computer. In case your hard drive is damaged
or your computer has a virus, ensure that you always have a bootable CD, DVD, or floppy disk available. Your Drivers and
Utilities media is an example of bootable media.
bps — bits per second — The standard unit for measuring data transmission speed.
BTU — British Thermal Unit — A measurement of heat output.
bus — A communication pathway between the components in your computer.
bus speed — The speed, given in MHz, that indicates how fast a bus can transfer information.
byte – The basic data unit used by your computer. A byte is usually equal to 8 bits.
C
C — Celsius — A temperature measurement scale where 0° is the freezing point and 100° is the boiling point of water.
cache — A special high-speed storage mechanism which can be either a reserved section of main memory or an
independent high-speed storage device. The cache enhances the efficiency of many processor operations.
L1 cache — Primary cache stored inside the processor.
L2 cache — Secondary cache which can either be external to the processor or incorporated into the processor
