glossary of internet terms - o

A COMPLETE LIST OF DEFINITIONS OF THE TERMS USED THROUGHOUT OUR WEBSITE

Use the letters below to jump to a particular section or scroll down through the definitions.

misc A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

OCR - An abbreviation of optical character recognition, the process by which printed text is scanned and converted into a computer-editable electronic document.

OEM - Short for original equipment manufacturer, which refers to components sold to manufacturers purely for incorporation in complete systems. Often, OEM parts are similar to those sold retail, but may be cheaper or sold with different software.

Office suite - A bundle of useful programs sold in one package. Lotus SmartSuite and Microsoft Office are prime examples.

Offline - Working with internet software, like an email program, without being connected to the internet, potentially running up telephone charges.

Ogg Vorbis - A free alternative to the MP3 standard.

On demand - A virus checker in the form of a program which you run whenever you want to check something.

On-access - A virus checker that runs continuously in the background and checks files each time you access them.

Onboard - Already fitted to your PC as part of the main circuitry on the motherboard. So 'onboard AGP graphics', would mean the PC with built-in AGP graphics facilities. The alternative is a separate expansions card which is attached to the motherboard via a special port.

Online - Being connected to the internet.

Online instructions - A read-me text file that will be installed on your computer during the installation of software, or will be present on the CD-ROM for future reference. Think of it as an electronic manual.

Online Service - A company that provides its own online content that's accessible only to fee-paying members, as well as access to the internet proper. AOL is an online service.

OpenGL - A programming standard used for work such as 3D modelling. Setting a game to use OpenGL can greatly improve the quality of the graphics.

Operating system - A crucial piece of software which is so important that it loads automatically when you switch on a computer. Windows 98, 2000 and XP are operating systems, as is Mac OSX, Linux, and Palm OS5 (for the Palm handheld computer) Operating systems govern the way the hardware and software components in a computer work together.

Optical resolution - The true resolution a scanner can 'see' as it passes across a document. Resolution is measured in dots per inch (dpi), so a 300dpi scan will pick up 300 lines of information for each inch of the scanned page.

OSR2 - This was a little-advertised version of Windows 95 distributed with new PCs and never made available to the general public as an upgrade. In many senses it was a test bed for new features that are now standard in later versions of Windows, such as USB.

Overclocked processor - A processor that has had its operating speed improperly increased.
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