WIFT a.k.a. Digital Bootcamp Week 1

General Mac Tutorials: http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/

Some Visuals of computer parts/hardware http://www.pctechbytes.com/picture/?level=collection&id=2

CASE(box) The computer case is a very important part of the computer. It protects all of the electronic components inside and provides adequate ventilation to prevent overheating.

Never open the case without unplugging the power cable!!!!!!

Know… Power cables ,power buttons, restart button, hold power button to reboot.

Firewire (aka. ieee1394) what is it used for/ fast audio and video transfer 400mbts or 800mbts. 800 is faster.

Two types of ends 6 pin vs. 4 pin (smaller) usually hook to a device like a digital camera. 6 pin goes to computer.

Ethernet port for high-speed network connectivity. Looks like big phone cable

Usb ports 1.0 vs 2.0 – usb 2.0 is FASTER

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) provides a serial bus standard for connecting devices, usually to a computer, but it also is in use on other devices such as set-top boxes, game consoles such as Sony's PlayStation 2, Nintendo Revolution and PDAs. USB can connect peripherals such as mice, keyboards, gamepads and joysticks, scanners, digital cameras, printers, hard disks, and networking components. For multimedia devices such as scanners and digital cameras, USB has become the standard connection method.

USB Type A versus type B. B is smaller and usually hooks to a peripheral device. Type A usually hooks to back of computer. For visuals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus

Modem. Used for dialup network access. Is a regular phone cable.

Speaker Out- Stereo mini. Same as a headset jack… or your computer speakers. Have two lines on plug, which are the left and right channel. Can be used to capture audio from a cd player or mini disk player.

RCA cables They are what you typically use to hook up a vcr or dvd player to your tv set. Red and white are audio and yellow is the video.

Motherboard A motherboard, also known as a main board, main board, logic board or system board, and sometimes abbreviated as mobo, is the central or primary circuit board connecting all of the components together.

WIFT a.k.a. Digital Bootcamp Week 1

Buses The motherboard uses tiny electrical paths to connect each component of the computer together called "buses." The more buses that connect to a component, the faster it can operate.

Power supply The power supply supplies the electrical power for a computer. It supplies power to the motherboard, drives, and certain expansion cards. It normally has at least one fan that helps cool the power supply and will assist in the task of cooling the computer. Power supplies come in a variety of wattages. They range anywhere from around 160 watts to about 700 watts. 350 to 400 watt power supplies are probably the most common.

ESD= electrical static discharge. 2 types. Static electricity or power surge. Power strip.. good way to protect electronics but you need a three prong grounded outlet.

Ram- Random access memory. RAM is the computer's main memory. The computer uses RAM constantly to temporarily store information while it is working with it.

SDRAM stands for Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory. SDRAM runs synchronously, (or at the same pace), with the processor's front side bus at 66MHz, 100MHz, or 133MHz, depending on what type of SDRAM the computer has.

CPU- central processing unit (processor)= brain of the computer, which receives data input, processes information, and executes instructions.

Clock speed= cpu speed measured in mhz or ghz. Such as 2ghz processing speed. CPU Clock speed and bus speed are important for overall fast processing.

Bus speed= speed at which data on system board is moving. Usually expressed in mhz

Hard Drive- It is simply where all your / information is held. Contains several disks where software is written… via a read write head.

Peripheral: External cd drive/ external firewire. Mouse keyboard… anything that’s not in the case.

Ways to save your data 1) Writable CD (compact Disk) or DVD (digital versatile disk). 3) Flash memory drive (jump drive) 4) Internal or external hard drive.

Expansion slots= slots on the motherboard which allow you to add devices. For example if you don’t have enough built in usb ports you can buy a card and put it in an Expansion slot.

PCI slots = peripheral component interconnect. Slots where you can add devices. AGP slots= Accelerated Graphics Port

AGP EXPANSION SLOT The AGP expansion slot connects AGP video cards to a motherboard. Video expansion cards are also known as graphic expansion cards. AGP stands for Accelerated Graphics Port. AGP video cards are capable of a higher data transfer rate than PCI video cards. WIFT a.k.a. Digital Bootcamp Week 1

Application Software (Example: Photoshop, MS W Word, Illustrator, etc...) Employs the capabilities of a computer directly and thoroughly to a task that the user wishes to perform.

Byte- A group of data bits that are processed together. Typically a byte consists of 8, bits. There are kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes, Terabytes, etc. 1 Byte = 8 bits 1 kilobyte or KB = about 1,000 bytes 1 Megabyte or MB= about 1,000,000 bytes 1 million 1 Gigabyte or GB= about 1,000,000,000 bytes 1 billion 1 Terabyte or TB = about 1,000,000,000,000 bytes 1 trillion

CODEC (Examples MP3, DivX, WMA etc...) a technical name for compression/ decompression. It both shrinks large files (such as music or movie files), and makes them playable on your computer computer. Codec programs are required for your media player to play your downloaded music and movies. Most codec’ codec’s are lossy in order to get a reasonably small file size. There are lossless codecs as well, but for most purposes the almost imperceptible increase in quality is not worth the considerable increase in data size.

File compression- lets you reduce the total number of bits and bytes in a file so it can be transmitted faster over the network, and takes up less storage space. Uncompressed video for instance, requires a high data rate. The video playback will become jerky and frame skipping may occur if the computer cannot process the video data fast enough for playback.

Lossy and lossless compression Lossy means info will be lost and cannot be recovered, lossy example is Jpeg for digital imaging. Many video codecs are lossy although some codecs use lossless algorithms.

FILE FORMAT is a particular way to encode information for storage in a computer file. Examples: .jgp, .gif, .tiff, .pdf, .html, ect

JPG or JPEG stores only static images; small file size and various levels of compression, repeated saving can cause data loss and corruption, great for saving photo quality images for websites

GIF: Supports storage of both still images and simple animations only uses up to 256 colors, not suited for photo quality images. Best used for web graphics, boxes, borders and small animated images.

TIFF: Still images, more stable than jpgs for storing photo quality images but larger file sizes, supports photoshop layers but smaller that a psd (photoshop) file, good for archiving photos

QUICKTIME: Supports video, audio and animation, can support several types of compression

HTML: for programming language, are basically text files but follow a certain rule set that can be used for specific purposes

WIFT a.k.a. Digital Bootcamp Week 1

FREEWARE is computer software that is available for use at no cost. It is an umbrella term, which includes:

Adware is distributed as , but it requires the user to view advertisements to use the software. Many cases of have been .

Donationware, Beggarware or Nagware The authors of donationware ask that anyone using their software make a donation to the authors or to some third party such as a charity. Because the donation is optional, donationware may also be freeware or fall into some other category.

Shareware is distributed similarly to freeware except that it requires payment after some trial period or for more features.

GUI- (graphical user interface) is a type of user interface, which allows people to interact with electronic devices such as computers; hand-held devices such as MP3 Players, Portable Media Players or Gaming devices

ISP (internet service provider) a company that of offers its customers access to the internet. For the University of Florida it is “Gatorlink”. AOL, netscape and Bellsouth are other examples.

Os (Operating System) aka System Software (Examples: Windows, Mac OS, Unix, Windows, Linux, and DOS) The most important program that runs on a computer. Manages hardware components of a computer system. Consider it like a traffic cop, it makes sure that different programs and users running at the same time do not interfere with each different other. The OS also facilitates the use of application software