A p p e n d i c e s
Life Bo ok 6 0 0 Series from F uj i tsu
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APPENDIX B GLOSSARY
AC Adapter
A device which converts the AC voltage from a
wall outlet to the DC voltage needed to power
your computer.
ACPI
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface.
This is a power management specification
developed by Intel, Microsoft,and Toshiba.
ACPI enables the operating system to control
the amount of power given to each device
attached to the computer. With ACPI,the oper-
ating system can turn off peripheral devices,
such as a CD-ROM players, when they're not in
use. As another example, ACPI will enable man-
ufactures to produce computers that automati-
cally power up as soon as you touch the key-
board. (You must upgrade to Windows 98 to
take advantage of ACPI.)
Active-Matrix Display
A type of technology for making flat-panel dis-
plays which has a transistor or similar device
for every pixel on the screen.
Auto/Airline Adapter
A device which converts the DC voltage from
an automobile cigarette lighter or aircraft DC
power outlet to the DC voltage needed to power
your notebook.
BIOS
Basic Input-Output System.A computer pro-
gram and set of default parameters stored in
ROM which tests and operates your computer
when you turn it on until it loads your installed
operating system from disk. Information from
the BIOS is transferred to the installed operat-
ing system to provide it with information on
the configuration and status of the hardware.
Bit
An abbrevi a ti on for bi n a ry digi t . A single piece of
i n form a ti on wh i ch is ei t h er a one (1) or a zero (0).
bps
An abbreviation for bits per second. Used to
describe data transfer rates.
Boot
To start-up a computer and load its operating
system from disk, ROM or other storage media
into RAM.
Bus
An electrical circuit with at least as many wires
as there are bits in your words which passes
data between the CPU and the sub-assemblies
inside your computer.
Byte
8 bits of parallel binary information.
Cache Memory
A block of memory built into the micro-
processor which is very much faster to access
than your system RAM and is used in specially
structured ways to make your overall data
handling time faster.
CardBus
A faster, 32-bit version of the PC Card interface
which offers performance similar to the 32-bit
PCI architecture.