USB Flash Drives are digital mass storage devices that contain flash memory interfaced with a Universal Serial Bus. These are hot swappable, rewriteable compact devices offering high storage capacities and have no moving parts and are much more reliable as compared to CDs and DVDs which have moving parts. They use USB mass storage standard…
What is TFT?
Thin Film Transistor is a kind of Field Effect Transistor which uses a non-semiconductor substrate to deposit thin layers of semiconductor, dielectric and metallic contacts on top. Glass finds predominant use as substrate as this technology is widely used in LCDs. When used in LCDs, transistors are embedded into the panel and there is a…
What is Spindle?
Spindle is the motor driven, central shaft in the computer hard disc drive that holds all the rotating rigid platters in place. In case of removable media, like a CD and DVD, the spindle is attached to the drive. In storage engineering, it also refers to a drive that is capable of handling very few…
What is Serial Mouse?
A serial mouse is a pointing device which connects to the computer using a serial port. Like any other mouse, e.g. PS/2 and USB mouse, it works on the principle of detection of 2-Dimensional motion on a plane supporting surface and then translates that physical motion into the movement of the cursor on the display…
What is Omnifont Recognition?
Omnifont recognition refers to the capability of OCR software applications to recognize virtually any font that roughly maintains the standard font shape. The modules are generally language dependent and support for different languages depends on the vendor. With this capability, the software may recognize any type of document without having and prior information on the…
What is MODEM?
A Modulator-Demodulator is a device that converts computer digital data signals into electrical signals capable of long distance transmission over transmission links and also converts back the electrical signal into the digital format for the computer. It generally modulates an analog carrier wave with a digital signal and demodulates the same. A modem generally modulates…
What is Laser Printer?
A laser printer is a common computer printing device used for high speed and quality printing. It uses a laser beam to project the image of the document on to an electrically charged rotating drum coated with photoconductive materials, such that charge gets removed from the areas which are exposed to light. The charged parts…
What is Joystick?
A Joystick is an input device which reports the angle it is tilted by the user to its controlling station as a signal to control certain operations. The stick is pivoted on a platform that has the necessary circuitry to detect the direction. The input may be taken using analog potentiometers or simple digital switches…
What is FAX Machine?
A Facsimile machine is a device that scans printed material and transmits it over a telephone line to another similar device with printing capabilities. The document is scanned with an optical scanner, converted into a bitmap image and transmitted over the link while on the receiver end, it is reconverted and printed. Fax machines usually…
What is Erasable Optical Disk?
An erasable optical disk is the one which can be erased and then loaded with new data content all over again. These generally come with a RW label. These are based on a technology popularly known as Magnetic Optical which involves the application of heat on a precise point on the disk surface and magnetizing…
What is Electroluminescent Display (ELD)?
It is a technology to make very thin flat panel displays by sandwiching a layer of electroluminescent material like Gallium Arsenide between two layers of conductors, one coated with vertical and other with horizontal wires, hence forming a grid. By virtue of electroluminescence, it emits radiation in visible range when an electric current flows through…
What is DVORAK Keyboard?
It is a keyboard layout made for speedy typing which claims reduced finger movements and reduced typing errors. It achieves this by putting the most commonly used letters in the middle row of keys and most common word combinations are positioned such that they are typed rapidly and rhythmically. Reduction in finger movement is also…
What is DVD?
Often called as Digital Versatile Disc, or Digital Video Disc, it is another optical storage medium which allows much higher storage capacity than a Compact Disc while having the same physical dimensions. It uses a laser diode of 650nm wavelength in contrast to the 780nm laser of a CD thus enabling a smaller pit to…
What is Dot Matrix Printer?
A Dot Matrix printer is one of the earliest forms of printers which print characters and illustrations by striking pins on an ink ribbon to print closely packed dots which together build the desired shape of the characters. Typing mechanism is similar to that of a typewriter, but it allows varied font size as characters…
What is Dongle?
This term was first used to describe a little hardware security device that plugged into a serial, parallel or USB port of the computer to authenticate the user access to a certain expensive high-end software application. When the program was run, it checked for the dongle and if it was not found, or verification failed,…
What is Contone Printer?
A contone printer is a form of laser printer that attempts to achieve continuous tone quality by varying the size of the dot over which color is applied on paper. However, due to limited number of dot sizes (usually 8 in number), it cannot fully achieve continuous printing and needs to use dithering to make…
What is CDfs?
CDfs is a virtual Linux file system that enables mounting, accessing, copying and playing of voice and data on a CD track by exporting the tracks and boot images as normal files. It helps unlock information in old ISO images. It can help access older files with the same name written on a multisession CD…
What is CD?
A Compact Disk is an optical storage device based on Laser technology to store digital data in the form of tiny indentations known as ‘Pits’. These indentations are encoded on a spiral track on the CD substrate using laser light and the space between successive pits is known as ‘Lands’. Originally developed for storing playback…
What is AZERTY Keyboard?
An AZERTY keyboard is the form of keyboard designed for dealing with Latin Alphabets such that the first five letters in the keyboard layout are ‘A’,’Z’,’E’,’R’,’T’ and ‘Y’. It differs slightly for the popular QWERTY keyboard in the fact that ‘Q’ and ‘A’, ‘Z’ and ‘W’ are swapped and ‘M’ appears on the middle row…
What is AT Keyboard?
Commonly called the 101-Key Enhanced Keyboard these days, any keyboard that uses a 5-pin DIN legacy connector is referred to as an AT-Keyboard. It originally had 84 keys which were later increased to 101 which did not include the Windows Key now commonly found on the IBM compatible keyboards. It succeeded the 83 Key XT…