Laptop/Notebook - Glossary

Bays
These are a space at the frame of the laptop for installing an internal drive or a peripheral.

Buffer
It is the amount of memory, which temporarily stores data to synchronize the transfer rate of data from one device to another.

Cache
Portion of a processor that holds recently accessed data. It is designed to speed up the successive accesses to the same data. The cache is normally constructed with faster memory chips than those in the main memory, so that data returned from the cache is delivered faster as compared to main memory.

Connectivity 
Nearly all laptops now feature an Ethernet (or LAN) port. This allows you to plug in a cable, and connect to a network. The speed will either be 100Mb per second or Gigabit 1 GB per second.

DDR
Double Data Rate, refers to memory speed.

DEFRAGMENT
The process of organizing the data on a hard-disk drive, so that data can be located and retrieved as quickly as possible.

Driver
It is software that comes with a peripheral. They allow the peripheral to communicate with the laptop.

Dual Channel
As in Dual Channel DDR Memory, similar to hard disk RAID where two devices (memory controllers) are used in such a way to increase speed (memory bandwidth).

DVD (Digital Video Disc)
It is an optical disc with multiple data layers. It exceeds the capacity of a standard CD-ROM and may contain video, audio, or any other type of digital data.

FSB
Front Side Bus, path which the CPU communicates with system memory and motherboard chipset.

Hard drive
Also called a hard disk. The hard drive is the filing cabinet of your laptop. The computer's hard drive serves as the main data storage area for the operating system, programs and documents.

LCD
Liquid Crystal Display.

MVA TFT
Multi-Domain Vertical Alignment, Fujitsu's version of brighter LCD screens.

Passive-Matrix Screens
Flat panel display technology comprised of a grid of horizontal and vertical wires with an LCD controller at every pixel.

PCMCIA
Personal Computer Memory Card International Association, slot interface used for various peripherals for laptops.

Pixel
The smallest element assigned to an independent color and intensity and displayed on a laptop monitor screen. A pixel is a dot with either a square or rectangular shape.

Optical Drive
A type of storage drive that uses a laser to read data from a spinning disc which includes CD's, CDR, CDRW, DVD, DVD-RW, DVD RAM etc.

Radeon
Name of graphics chip or card made by ATI.

Resolution
It is a picture clarity measure that is based on the number of pixels used to reproduce the image.

SCSI (Small Computer System Interface)
Standard for a system-level interface between laptops and such peripherals as hard disks, CD-ROM's, printers and scanners.

SODIMM
Small Outline Dual Inline Memory Module.

TFT
Thin Film Transistor.

USB
Universal Serial Bus.