Techie terms..

Technology being an integral part of our daily lives today; we come across various technical terms that are commonly used. Most people might be aware of the meanings of these but for those who don’t, like me, here is a brief introduction of a few of them:

Laptops, Notebooks, Tablet

Well, to start with laptops are portable computers. Laptops include a battery for power and a touchpad instead of a mouse for input. Notebooks are mini-laptops and are ultra light and thin. They do not have CD or DVD drives and lacks the power to run demanding programs. Tablet is portable personal computer with a touch screen interface and is smaller than a notebook. A tablet PC costs considerably more than a notebook and often lacks the QWERTY keyboard found in notebooks.

Ipod and MP3 player

MP3 player is a portable music player with inbuilt memory that can be connected to a computer to transfer and store audio files. Ipod is a brand of MP3 made by Apple which uses the Itunes software of Apple.

PDA, Smartphone

Short for personal digital assistant, these are small handheld devices that combine computing, telephone/fax, Internet and networking features. A typical PDA can function as a cellular phone, fax sender, web browser and a personal organizer. These devices are usually pen-based, using a stylus rather than a keyboard for input. PDAs are cheaper than smartphones.

Smartphones are mobile phones which offer advanced computing facilities than a basic feature phone. They function like a pocket PC, wherein, the user can install and run advanced applications. Smartphones connect to a cellular network while PDAs do not and hence PDAs are unable to provide the same range of connectivity to Internet.

Virus, Worm, Trojan

Computer virus attaches itself to files or programs that damages hardware, software and files as it travels. These generally get attached to executable files. So they don’t harm your PC unless you run the program.

Worms are similar to virus but unlike a virus they can travel from PC to PC even without any human intervention. Worms replicate themselves, and the ability to travel across networks using system files, makes it dangerous, as they consume a lot of network bandwidth, making the servers or computers to stop responding.

Trojan is an application which tricks the user into believing that it is a legitimate software, but when run, can cause damage to your system. They are known to give a backdoor to your computer, providing malicious users access to your system. Trojans do not replicate or infect files like worms or viruses.