Trimble Consulting -- Tech Ref
Do you sometimes need a translator to talk technology?  This page offers some simple definitions to common terms.

Units of Measure
Kilobyte (k or Kb): One thousand bytes of information. A typical one page letter might be around 25k to 30k in size.

Megabyte (Mb): One million bytes of information. A typical PC might have 512Mb of RAM.

Gigabyte (Gb): One billion bytes of information. A relatively small hard drive on a new computer might have a storage capacity of 40Gb.

Terabyte (Tb): One trillion bytes of information. One thousand Gigabyte. A network storage device might have multiple Tb of total storage.

Jargon and TLAs
TLA Three Letter Acronym: The secret to "Talking Tech".

URL Universal Resource Locater: The "address" of a web site on the internet. Usually starts with: www.   example: www.trimbleconsulting.net

RAM Random Access Memory: Temporary Information store that allows the computer to do its work. Generally: more is better

DVD Digital Versatile Disk: Does everything a CD does and MUCH more. Max capacity is a bit over 17Gb of information per disk.  A standard CD's max is about 650 Mb.

USB Universal Serial Bus: A high speed interface that allows you to attach lots of stuff to your computer like: printers, scanners, cameras, etc.

NIC Network Interface Card: The computer component that allows your computer to connect to a network. Can be wired or wireless.

IP Internet Protocol: The language of both the Internet and internal networks.

POTS Plain Old Telephone Lines: No kidding. Its really that simple...

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol: Phone systems based on IP. Voice calls are routed over the data network just like other data. This can work for both internal phone systems and across the Internet.

LAN Local Area Network: Usually refers to the data/voice network within one building

WAN Wide Area Network: Usually refers to a collection of Local Area Networks (LANs) connected between buildings

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