A USB hub is a piece of hardware that allows for a single USB port to be expanded into several. This allows more ports to be used for different connected devices. For example, on a computer there might be four USB slots, but within the actual computer, there might only be a single upstream port. This means that the four downstream ports are connected to one port that leads within the computer. The USB hub allows for the four separate ports to connect together while keeping their autonomy and run Read More

LGA-775 is a 775-contact CPU socket used by some Intel Celeron D, Pentium D, Pentium Extreme Edition, Pentium 4, and Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processors. LGA stands for “Land Grid Array”. In English, this means that the pins in an LGA socket are built into the socket — not into the CPU. This total reversal of earlier designs gives better power distribution, which enables Front Side Bus speeds up to 266MHz. Moving the fragile pins from the CPU to the motherboard also means that if you break a pin, you Read More

Water cooling is one of the newer cooling systems available for computers with high-end cards and chips. This cooling system rests on the principle that water is a much better conductor of heat because of its high thermal conductivity and high specific heat. Water cooling systems for computers works much like the cooling system in a car where heat is dissipated by passing water over the engine and transferring this to the radiator where heat is released to the air. Traditional PC Cooling Systems Computer components generate heat through the Read More

A touchpad is a computing interface device that typically mimics the functions of a computer mouse. Instead of having an external peripheral device such as a mouse, the touchpad enables the user to interact with the device through the use of a single or multiple fingers being dragged across relative positions on a sensitive pad. Touchpads are typically found on laptop computers but are increasingly being utilized on devices such as portable mp3 players such as Apple's iPod and PDAs such as HP's iPaq series. Touchpads are generally resilient additions Read More

SSE stands for Streaming SIMD Extensions. Introduced by Intel in its line of Pentium III processors, SIMD technology allows for "Single Instruction Multiple Data." While older processors could only process one data element per instruction, SIMD technology allows instructions to handle multiple data elements, making processing much quicker. SSE's use of SIMD technology allows for data processing in applications such as 3D graphics to benefit greatly from the use of SSE. In contrast to MMX, a fairly similar technology, SSE registers have much larger bits, allowing SSE to work even Read More

Random Access Memory (RAM) is a type of computer memory. It derives its name from the fact that any piece of data stored on it can be accessed at any time. RAM however stores data for as long as the computer is switched on or is in use. It is the most common type of computer memory available today. The very first form of RAM was the magnetic core memory. It was in use till the introduction of static and dynamic integrated RAM. Prior to that, computers utilized vacuum tubes, Read More

A computer monitor, technically termed as a visual display unit, can be plainly described as an electronic device that transmits information from the computer onto a screen, thereby acting as an interface and connecting the viewer with the computer. At present, computer monitors are available in a variety of shapes, designs, and colors. However, based on the technology used to make computer monitors, they can be broadly categorized into two types. These include CRT (cathode ray tube) and LCD (Liquid Crystal Technology). CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) Monitors These monitors employ Read More

One of the most frustrating things when dealing with a computer is when something goes so wrong with it that there is nothing else that can be done to preserve the computer other than to do a complete factory restore. What this means is that the computer is sent back to a time when it was first shipped out of the factory. While the hardware has still been worn down, there is nothing on it other than the basic programs that came with the computer installation. It should be noted Read More

MMX stands for Multimedia Extensions. MMX is a technology designed to accelerate multimedia and communications applications. This acceleration and simplification is done through a set of multimedia instructions which are built into microprocessors to enable them to handle common multimedia operations like DSP, or Digital Signal Processing. MMX works by taking certain operations, such as moving a pixel of graphics, which are usually processed as 8-bit integers, and instead packing a number of these pixels into one larger data unit. MMX then performs the requested operation on the larger data Read More

Noise-canceling headphones are headsets that have the ability not just to block out noise but to cancel it using the properties of sound waves. Sound waves have compression and rarefaction characteristics similar to the crests and troughs of a transverse wave. They also have amplitude and frequency characteristics. These characteristics of sound waves are used in noise cancellation by noise-canceling headphones. The first noise-canceling headphones were manufactured by Bose and quickly found a market especially among musicians. Their popularity came from their ability to filter out and eliminate the white Read More