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| An input device is any device that provides input to a computer. There are dozens of possible input devices, but the two most common ones are a keyboard and mouse. |
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| A keyboard is basically a board of keys. Along with the mouse, the keyboard is one of the primary input devices used with a computer. |
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| The mouse is one of the primary input devices used with today's computers. The name comes from the small shape of the mouse, which you can move quickly back and forth on the mouse pad |
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| "Central Processing Unit." This is the pretty much the brain of your computer. |
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| While memory can refer to any medium of data storage, it usually refers to RAM, or random access memory. When your computer boots up, it loads the operating system into its memory, or RAM. This allows your computer to access system functions, such as handling mouse clicks and keystrokes, since the event handlers are all loaded into RAM. Whenever you open a program, the interface and functions used by that program are also loaded into RAM. |
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| Any device that outputs information from a computer is called, not surprisingly, an output device. |
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| A printer is an output device that prints paper documents. This includes text documents, images, or a combination of both. The two most common types of printers are inkjet and laser printers. |
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| The hard disk is a spindle of magnetic disks, called platters, that record and store information. Because the data is stored magnetically, information recorded to the hard disk remains intact after you turn your computer off. |
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| A byte is a unit of measurement used to measure data. One byte contains eight binary bits, or a series of eight zeros and ones. |
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| A gigabyte is 2 to the 30th power, or 1,073,741,824 bytes. It can be estimated as 10 to the 9th power, or one billion (1,000,000,000) bytes. |
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| The computer term "bit" comes from the phrase "Binary DigIT," which is different than that thing you put around a horse's mouth. A bit is a single digit number in base-2 (a zero or a one) and is the smallest unit of computer data. A full page of text is composed of about 16,000 bits. |
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