TIPS FOR THE BEGINNER

Well, I certainly didn’t learn these words in English lessons at school. Do these words represent a message from some alien civilisation which is trying to contact us earthlings? On face value, I would guess that a gigabyte was a very large mouthful, while megahertz sounds like some excruciating pain. A RAM, of course, as we all know, is a male sheep and as forROM, well I guess that might be an incorrect spelling of the capital city of Italy.

Anyone who owns a computer, or who has browsed through a store with the intention of possibly buying one, will recognise these terms as part of the ever increasing vocabulary of Computer Jargon. To both the browser and the purchaser, these terms constitute an almost unsurmountable barrier to selecting a computer, or using the thing once it is installed in your home.

As a sometime instructor to computer beginners, I have found that the jargon is the most difficult hurdle to overcome in the process of learning to operate the machine. Most of these seemingly esoteric terms are merely acronyms, used for the sake of brevity. [An acronym is a word comprised of the first letters of a phrase or series of words, as for example NSW is an acronym for New South Wales].

While it is quite possible to drive a motor vehicle satisfactorily without having a clue as to the meaning of terms like “distributor,” or “crankshaft,” one’s awareness of the performance of the car is aided if the fundamental “operating system” is vaguely understood. And so it is with computers. You can operate the things with little or no understanding of the jargon, but some knowledge is essential when making an initial purchase, and helpful when “configuring” the thing (a fancy term that means adjusting the computer to meet your individual requirements).

Just to get you started, here are the meanings of a few basic terms. A “byte” is the smallest amount of data which a computer requires to represent, for example, an alphabetical character. A “megabyte” is one million bytes. Hence, the more bytes, the more data the computer can process. “Hertz” is a term originally meaning “cycles per second,” and in the computer world it represents the speed at which the machine can operate. Hence, the more “hertz,” the faster the computer.

RAM is an acronym for “random access memory,” and refers to that part of the computer in which all the calculations take place. ROM stands for “read only memory,” and thus represents stored data that cannot be altered. Most “software” (programs) are purchased in the form of CD-ROMs, which interprets as “Compact Disc – Read Only Memory.” Thus, you can access all the data (text, pictures, or sounds) on the disc, but you can’t alter the content … or at least you couldn’t until the very clever “read/write” CD drive and discs were recently introduced.

The Internet: How Much Speed Do I Need? The Internet has been around for a long time. In the late 1980s, large businesses used email communication. And for those of you who can remember the DOS operating systems which preceded Windows, they were complicated to learn, but highly efficient once mastered: and as far as megabytes and megahertz were concerned, well the systems ran on a shoe-string.

Until the early 1990s, computers were generally too expensive for personal use. In fact, the inflation-adjusted cost of the earliest PCs (Personal Computers) was mind boggling compared to the cost of the present-day super-duper whiz-bang PC at around $2,000.

Currently the telecommunications industry, of which the Internet is but one part, is the most rapidly developing, aggressively competitive industry in the world. And the technology is advancing at what seems to be something close to the speed of light. Last month I talked about the extensive uses of acronyms in the vocabulary of computer jargon. Well, whilst I make it my business to catch up on the internet/communications news at least twice a week, new acronyms are spewing forth at a rate far too great for my mere mortal mind to absorb.

If you already have a computer which is connected to the Internet, and you find it that it serves your personal needs adequately, then hang onto it. You DON’T need to upgrade right now. Anything you purchase today will, in a sense, be superseded within 3-6 months. But it is all relative. Megahertz, representing the speed of your CPU (Central processing unit) has very little to do with the efficiency of your Internet connection.

Beware of computer salespersons in large retail stores: they normally receive no training, and have no idea of what they are talking about. Be equally aware of salespersons in specialty or second-hand computer shops. They probably DO know what they are talking about, but their main concern is to sell you the most expensive computer that they can offer.

So, forget the Megahertz, and forget the modem speed: 56 Kbps (kilobytes per second) has been the standard for some time, and doesn’t look like changing overnight. Surprisingly, the most important element in your Internet connection is your telephone line. The age of the line, the age of your telephone exchange, and other related factors, can do much more to slow down your Internet connection than a less than 56 Kbps modem, or a “relatively” slow CPU. The technical staff of your Internet Service Provider will be more than happy to discuss and explain these factors to you.

I have just indulged myself by purchasing a 550 Mhz computer, running Windows Millennium edition. The internal modem is the standard 56 Kbps. But to my horror and disillusionment, it runs the Internet only marginally faster that the 100 Mhz computer with Windows 95 and a 33.6 Kbps modem, which I was previously using.

Recently technology has produced more than one method of super-fast Internet access, but there is a cost involved, and the additional speed is not important for the “normal” user who just wants to send emails, read the news, join a chat club, and occasionally do some research.