Dell XPS 720 Black Owner's Manual - Page 203

Glossary Terms in this Glossary are provided for informational purposes only and may or may not describe features included with your particular computer. A AC - alternating current - The form of electricity that powers your computer when you plug the AC adapter power cable in to an electrical outlet. ACPI - advanced configuration and power interface - A power management specification that enables Microsoft® Windows® operating systems to put a computer in standby or hibernate mode to conserve the amount of electrical power allocated to each device attached to the computer. AGP - accelerated graphics port - A dedicated graphics port that allows system memory to be used for videorelated tasks. AGP delivers a smooth, true-color video image because of the faster interface between the video circuitry and the computer memory. AHCI - Advanced Host Controller Interface - An interface for a SATA hard drive Host Controller which allows the storage driver to enable technologies such as Native Command Queuing (NCQ) and hot plug. ALS - ambient light sensor - A feature that helps to control display brightness. antivirus software - A program designed to identify, quarantine, and/or delete viruses from your computer. ASF - alert standards format - A standard to define a mechanism for reporting hardware and software alerts to a management console. ASF is designed to be platform- and operating system-independent. B battery life span - The length of time (years) during which a portable computer battery is able to be depleted and recharged. battery operating time - The length of time (minutes or hours) that a portable computer battery powers the computer. BIOS - basic input/output system - A program (or utility) that serves as an interface between the computer hardware and the operating system. Unless you understand what effect these settings have on the computer, do not change them. Also referred to as system setup. bit - The smallest unit of data interpreted by your computer. Blu-ray Disc™ (BD)- An optical storage technology offering storage capacity of up to 50 GB, full 1080p video resolution (HDTV required), and as many as 7.1 channels of native, uncompressed surround sound. Bluetooth® wireless technology - A wireless technology standard for short-range (9 m [29 feet]) networking devices that allows for enabled devices to automatically recognize each other. boot sequence - Specifies the order of the devices from which the computer attempts to boot. bootable media - A CD, DVD, or floppy disk that you can use to start your computer. In case your hard drive is damaged or your computer has a virus, ensure that you always have a bootable CD, DVD, or floppy disk available. Your Drivers and Utilities media is an example of bootable media. bps - bits per second - The standard unit for measuring data transmission speed. BTU - British thermal unit - A measurement of heat output. Glossary 203