Plain speech....

Computer people tend to use a lot of techno-babble to describe what they do - there's a good reason for this - computers are complex things, and you need to be able to use technical terms to other computer people to make sure you get exactly what you're asking for, and to avoid confusion.

The problem is that for anyone who doesn't know the technical terms, this just leads to them being confused and a feeling of being 'shut out' of the discussion, and some people don't like to ask for the terms to be explained because they're afraid of looking foolish, or they're just too polite.

So - here's a list of some words or phrases you may hear bandied around, and an attempt at a plain english explanation. If a term is underlined, it will move the page so that you can see the meaning for that term. Please don't take these as gospel - we can make mistakes as well. If there's an terms you want me to add, explain better, or you think we've got something wrong, please contact us.

Blackberry - a sort of oversized mobile phone that can also send and receive e-mails, browse the internet, and do other things like act as a notepad and have an address book. They have a nice trick called 'pushing' the e-mail, so that the e-mail just arrives at the device without you having to remember to go and check if there's any new e-mails

Bytes - a byte is a measurement of the size of a piece of information. Computers use lots of bytes when storing information, so to save having to use large numbers, we use terms such as Kilo, Mega and Giga. A Kilobyte (KB) is 1,000 bytes, a Megabyte (MB) is 1 million bytes, and a Gigabyte (GB) is 1,000 Megabytes. Actually those numbers aren't accurately true, as computers count in 2's, so a KB is 1,024 bytes - but 1,000 is good enough for humans. That doesn't mean much, so to give you some idea of these sizes, if you write a A4 page of text on the computer without any fancy fonts (typefaces) or anything - this will take up roughly 1 KB

Firewall - a piece of hardware or software that can help to stop people trying to take information from your PC, or stop spyware from connecting to the internet without you knowing. Windows XP now has a built in firewall, and there's lots of companies who will sell you a firewall, but there's also some companies that give away firewall software for free.

Hard drive - a piece of hardware inside the 'main box' of your computer that holds all the information for your computer so that it's not lost when you turn the power off. These get bigger and bigger as time passes, an average sized hard drive now is going to be about 40 GB - have a look at Bytes to get more of an idea what this means.

Hardware - a physical 'bit' of your computer - you can touch it. As opposed to software.

Firmware - software that is 'fixed' inside a piece of hardware so that it can't be altered. Annoyingly, hardware with firmware inside now often comes with the ability to do 'firmware updates' - altering the firmware, but you get the basic idea.

Internet domain - a 'space' on the internet that you buy and have the rights to, so that you can put your own information on the web and access it no matter who you use to connect to the web with. often used with e-mails as well to give you an e-mail address that won't change.

Network - a way of joining computers together so that you can share information and hardware between the computers. So if you had 3 computers but only one printer, networking the computers together would allow you to use the printer from any of the computers. Networks can be made using wires to connect the computers together, or they can be wireless.

Software - the programs your computer runs - these are the instructions that tell the computers what to do in any given situation.

Spyware - software installed on your computer (normally without your knowledge) that looks for things such as credit card numbers or passwords to sites such as your bank, so that it can then send these numbers and passwords to the author of the spyware. This is why virus killers are used to detect and remove these.

Trojan - software that looks as if it might be useful, but has been written to conceal a nasty surprise such as a virus or spyware. The name comes from the old tale of the Trojan horse. Virus killers can detect and remove these.

Virus - software that can get onto your machine and then tries to copy itself to spread to other machines, and can also do nasty tricks like delete information from your PC or just be annoying and slow your machine right down. Virus killers can detect and remove these.

Virus killers - software that looks for virus's, spyware, trojans and other dodgy software, and then attempts to remove it, or at least stop it from working. There's lots of companies who will sell you a virus killer, but there's also nice companies out there who give it away for free.

Wireless - a way of making a computer network without having to run wires all over the place, instead, the network connects the computers together using radio technology.