Until I explained it to her, my wife did not know what a browser is. The woman has been on the computer for years, yet when I said, ‘Close out your browser” the other day, she asked (a bit testily, I might add), “Is that the place where I get my mail?”
Okay, maybe some of us know a little more than that – and maybe not. There are a lot of us that don’t know some of the most basic of computer terms, and would rather die than admit it at the risk of being embarrassed. I mean, everybody knows this stuff, don’t they?
Nope.
Below is a list to help familiarize you with basic terms that you may have heard “everybody” use and had no idea what they meant.
Here we go:
Boot: To start up your computer. If your computer is already on, reboot means to restart it.
Browser: Ask my wife. Seriously, though, a browser is a program that you use to “browse” or “surf” the web. If you sit down at your computer and you get on the internet, you are using a browser. You cannot visit anything on the internet without a browser. Some examples of current browsers are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, and the latest, Avant.
Desktop: Like the top of your desk, the desktop on your computer is the part of the screen that contains folders, icons, etc. It’s kind of a file system. There can be folders, icons, documents, and you can arrange them any way you like, or even toss them out, since there is a Recycle Bin (which is called a garbage can in my office)..
Download: When you download something, you are transferring data from another computer to your computer, usually over the internet. You are going to receive the data. On the other hand, if you want to upload something, you are going to give something from your computer to someone else’s.
Font: A font is the style and size of lettering. For instance, if you want to compose a letter that looks like it has been written in calligraphy, you might want to use a font like Monotype Corsiva, instead of the one I have been using here, which is called Arial. There is a huge selection of fonts that you can download for free off of the internet.
Hard Drive: Simply put, a hard drive is where all of your files, pictures, videos, programs, etc. are stored. There are different sizes of hard drives, depending on how much stuff you want to have on your computer. For example, if you are a video editor, you need a very large hard drive (videos can be very big files). If you only use your computer for the internet and to do your taxes, you don’t need a very big hard drive. When you hear about people “losing their hard drive” it means that they have lost all of the data that was stored on their computer.
Hardware: Hardware is all of the physical stuff of your computer, like your mouse, your keyboard, your monitor, your printer, your stereo speakers, etc. Software, on the other hand, runs as the non-tangible part of a computer. Your anti-virus program is software. Data, files, images, and videos are all examples of software. You need both software and hardware for a computer and its parts to run.
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