Basic Information Technology

A panel of keys that operate a computer or typewriter.

A small handheld device which is moved across a mat or flat surface to move the cursor on a computer screen.

A set of computer instructions in firmware which control input and output operations.

Tethering is when you turn you smartphone into a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot and share your phones 3G/4G data connection. Once you've turned tethering on, any device with a wireless connection can connect to the internet via your smartphone's connection.

A printed circuit board containing the principal components of a computer or other device, with connectors for other circuit boards to be slotted into.

Designed by Intel, Compaq and Digital, the PCI bus first appeared in PCs in 1993 and co-existed with the ISA bus for many years. Later, motherboards had only PCI slots and one specialized slot for the display adapter; first AGP and then PCI Express.

The Extended Industry Standard Architecture (in practice almost always shortened to EISA and frequently pronounced "eee-suh") is a bus standard for IBM PC compatible computers.

The Type I and II cards work in a Type III slot and a Type I card will work in a Type II slot. (On the other hand, the thicker cards can't be fitted into the slots for the thinner cards.) The PCMCIA standard is most commonly applied to portable PCs but it can also be used on desktop computers.

Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive (FDD). Floppy disks, initially as 8-inch (200 mm) media and later in 5¼-inch (133 mm) and 3½-inch (90 mm) sizes, were a ubiquitous form of data storage and exchange from the mid-1970s well into the 2000s.

Combo Drive Read and Writes CDs, but only reads DVDs.

CPU (pronounced as separate letters) is the abbreviation for central processing unit. Sometimes referred to simply as the central processor, but more commonly called processor, the CPU is the brains of the computer where most calculations take place.

A computer icon is a pictogram displayed on a computer screen in order to help the user navigate a computer system or mobile device. The icon itself is a small picture or symbol serving as a quick, "intuitive" representation of a software tool, function or a data file accessible on the system.

3D printing or additive manufacturing is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital file. The creation of a 3D printed object is achieved using additive processes. In an additive process an object is created by laying down successive layers of material until the entire object is created.

Impact printer refers to a class of printers that work by banging a head or needle against an ink ribbon to make a mark on the paper. This includes dot-matrix printers, daisy-wheel printers, and line printers.

The plotter is a computer printer for printing vector graphics. In the past, plotters were used in applications such as computer-aided design, though they have generally been replaced with wide-format conventional printers. A plotter gives a hard copy of the output. It draws pictures on paper using a pen.

A system in which information can be expressed by combinations of the digits 0 and 1.

A device that is used to project rays of light, especially an apparatus with a system of lenses for projecting slides or film on to a screen.

A MIDI keyboard is typically a piano-style user interface keyboard device used for sending MIDI signals or commands over a USB or MIDI cable to other devices connected and operating on the same MIDI protocol interface.