Although it hadn't occurred to me before, I think I'm safe in assuming that if you're here reading this most informative and witty blog of mine, then you are not in need of the remedial course on how to run your computer.  You obviously know where the O-N/O-F-F button is, you have mastered the use of the keyboard and the mouse and have come to the realization that there's this thing called the "internet" where you can do all kinds of wacky and wild stuff.  Personally, I'm sitting here chugging Darjeeling, listening  to my bloated library of pirated music, writing this blog and playing cut-throat Crazy 8's against a bunch of noobs (read newcomers).  I am so kicking their asses!  Yeah!  You know what they say:  If you ain' cheatin', you ain' tryin'.

Anyhoo, before we get in to a discussion of the fun-filled area of the internet, let's backtrack just a smidge and concentrate on that wonderful box, or slender folding plastic doodad, that is your computer.  For some (or maybe even a lot) of you I'm going to get in to an area that may be way below your knowledge base and I would apologize, but I'm above all that.  Just know that I'm not trying to talk down to anyone, except maybe the guy in the third row who's staring at me with that glazed over look.  I'm just making sure that I'm not leaving anyone behind.  If you are unfamiliar with this stuff, what comes later will not make any sense to you, so please try and focus.  With that said, some definitions:

Central Processing Unit or CPU - This is the brain of your computer (think "Intel inside").  It does all the millions, billions and trillions of calculations that are necessary to make the programs on your computer run.  Without this little chunk of silicon, your desktop ceases to be anything more useful than a boat anchor.  When you see the computer ads in the piles of magazines that Dell sends to your house, it's listed something like this:  Dell Dimension XPS Intel Pentium D Processor 920 with Dual Core Technology (2.80 GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB) - MHz stands for Megahertz or millions of clock cycles per second, and GHz stands for Gigahertz or billions of clock cycles per second.  This determines how much data the CPU can handle in a given amount of time.  Obviously, GHz is more data in less time than MHz and the higher the corresponding number, the more calculations per second.  The number I underlined is the "speed" of the processor.  The other two numbers we'll have to discuss later.  Do not confuse this with memory.  We'll get to that in a minute…

Hard Disk (Drive) or HDD - This is the heart of your computer and it's used for long term storage.  This is where all the  programs you load are stored so the computer can access them when you click on an icon, and it is the one piece of hardware that you, the user, can directly access and control.  It is also one of the most abused and overlooked areas of the computer.  When you see this listed in our fictional Dell ad, it would look something like this:  160GB (7900 RPM) Western Digital HDD…MB stands for Megabytes (millions of Bytes), GB stands for Gigabytes (billions of Bytes) and TB stands for Terabytes (trillions of Bytes).  Just for clarification purposes, 1 Byte is composed of 8 bits of information with a bit being equal to one character (equate 1 letter or number).  This is the amount of room that your hard drive physically has to store information.  The RPM rating is how fast the platters in the hard drive spin and thusly can access your precious data - so the higher the RPM's, the better.  Do not confuse this with memory.  We'll get to that in a second…

Random Access Memory or RAM - In our little visualization of the computer as a living organism, memory would be the lungs  of your computer, linking the brain (the CPU) and the heart (the HDD) together and pumping oxygen (data) to each in turn.  It also has to be one of the least understood areas of the computer. When you access a program by clicking on an icon, the HDD starts loading data into memory for the CPU to access quickly.  If the CPU had to draw that data directly from the HDD, it would take forever.  This is generally where the bottlenecks occur.  When you have too little memory for the amount of information you're trying to load, everything s-l-o-w-s d-o-w-n as the system starts moving the active application into RAM, and inactive applications that are still running into a cache, or virtual memory, on the hard drive.  Imagine, if you will, a 10'x10' room full to the ceiling with stuff you want to hawk on E-bay (things like stacks of old Reader's Digests and TV guides, piles of Bobby Vinton singles on virgin vinyl and a few cases of used toothpicks).  You have just returned home from your weekly trip to the local flea market and you need to put more "cool" stuff that you just bought (some rip-off art prints that you got for a song, a large stack of ratty comic books and a pallet of 1 ply toilet paper) in there, but you can't until you take some of that other stuff and store it somewhere else for the time being.  So this perverse version of pass the parcel ensues until you find some sucker to unload a portion of this crap on, or you get crushed in the inevitable avalanche and make the "tragic story" spot on the 11 o'clock news.  This is the same thing that your computer does when you try to load too much data at once; it passes data back and forth between the RAM and the hard drive until you shut a few of those cotton pickin' applications down, or until the system crashes to the famous blue-screen-of-death and you just miss out on your opportunity to corner the pork belly market.

A memory upgrade is the cheapest, easiest and most beneficial upgrades that you can make to take a slow computer and give it the extra oomph it needs to speed it up.  In our fictional Dell ad, it might be listed something like this: 1GB Shared DDR2 SDRAM - again, MB stands for Megabytes, and GB stands for Gigabytes.  If you do decide to upgrade the memory in your computer, you absolutely need to make to get the correct type and amount of memory that you computer and operating system are capable of recognizing, or have a professional install it for you.

Well, that's it for now, my budding computer-nerds-in-training.  We're going to cover computer narcolepsy, and the virtual Adderall prescription for it, in the next installment of you most favoritist blog of all times  After that, I think that we'll breeze over some more basic components of your new best friend.  I know, I know...I've left you all breathless with anticipation.  Please, do try and contain yourselves for the love of Pete.

Steve@Dall-Tech