Glossary of Terms
| Card | A
printed circuit board that adds some feature to a computer. cartridge drive - a storage device, like a hard drive, in which the medium is a cartridge that can be removed. |
|
Chooser |
A desk accessory used to select a printer, or other external device, or to log onto a network. |
| CD-ROM | An
acronym for Compact Disc Read-Only Memory. |
| Clipboard | A portion of memory where the Mac temporarily stores information. Called a Copy Buffer in many PC applications because it is used to hold information which is to be moved, as in word processing where text is "cut" and then "pasted". |
| Clock Rate (MHz) | The instruction processing speed of a computer measured in millions of cycles per second (i.e., 200 MHz). |
| command | The act of giving an instruction to your Mac either by menu choice or keystroke. |
| command (apple) key | A modifier key, the Command key used in conjunction with another keystroke to active some function on the Mac. |
| compiler | A program the converts programming code into a form that can be used by a computer. |
| compression | A technique that reduces the size of a saved file by elimination or encoding redundancies (i.e., JPEG, MPEG, LZW, etc.) |
| control panel | A program that allows you to change settings in a program or change the way a Mac looks and/or behaves. |
| CPU | The Central Processing Unit. The processing chip that is the "brains" of a computer. |
| crash | A system malfunction in which the computer stops working and has to be restarted. |
