Toshiba Portege 2010 User Guide 2 - Page 201

201 Glossary serial - Processes that occur one at a time. In communications, it means the transmission of one bit at a time sequentially over a single channel. Most computers have a serial port, which provides a serial interface between the computer and a single device, and/or a USB port which provides a high-speed connection to multiple devices. See Universal Serial Bus (USB). Compare parallel. shortcut - See keyboard shortcut. software - See program. Compare hardware. Standby - A feature of some Windows® operating systems that allows you to turn off the computer without exiting your open applications and to continue from where you left off when you turn the computer on again. Suspend - A feature of some Windows® operating systems that allows you to turn off the computer without exiting your open applications and to continue from where you left off when you turn the computer on again. system disk - A diskette that contains the operating system files needed to start the computer. Any diskette can be formatted as a system disk. A system disk is also called a "bootable disk" or a "startup disk." Compare non-system disk. system prompt - The symbol (in the MS-DOS® operating system, generally a drive letter followed by a "greater than" sign) indicating where you enter commands. T TFT display - See active-matrix display. U universal serial bus (USB) 2.0 - USB 2.0 is a serial bus that supports a data transfer rate of up to 480 Mbps (480 million bits per second). USB can connect up to 127 peripheral devices through a single all-purpose USB port. USB allows hot swapping of peripherals. See also bus, hot swapping, serial. upload - To send a file to another computer through a modem or network. See also download. USB - See universal serial bus (USB) 2.0.