Paging File: The paging file is your "virtual memory." It used to be called the swap file in Windows 9x. You have a certain amount of physical memory (RAM). Everything you do on your computer is done in memory. The operating system itself resides in memory, the programs you are running reside in memory, the documents you are working on reside in memory. Now let's suppose you run out of space in your physical memory. Your operating system takes the oldest material in memory and writes it to a special file on your hard drive - the paging file. This frees up space in your physical memory. It then grabs whatever new material it needs to put in memory. If then, it needs the material it wrote out to the paging file, it writes the now oldest material to disk, and reads back the other material into memory. This is all handled by Windows' memory manager. Memory is written in pages, hence the name.

Since paging is disk access, and since hard disk drive access is the slowest function of your computer, if you don't have enough RAM, you will hear your hard drive constantly being accessed. This slows down your computer remarkably and is why, in this situation, the single most effective thing you can do to speed up your computer is to add RAM.

Phishing: This is a scam whereby someone tricks you into giving them sensitive information such as credit card or bank account numbers. Web pages are easy to copy. Someone can copy your bank's web page, send you an email with your bank's logo, have it very official looking, with some sort of message that tricks you into going to a site and entering account information -- but the site it takes you to is not that of your bank. Some of these are extremely convincing. It can also happen that a hacker hijacks your bank's website and redirects it to a different computer, so that when you go to yourbank.com, you actually wind up in some other place. You may then enter your account number and password, and you've just given it to some nefarious person. See Sidebar. *

Processor: A processor is a collection of very special and tiny circuits put on a chip that then does all the "work" of computing. Common processors are Intel's Pentium IV's or Celerons, or AMD's processors. These do the "computing" in your computer.

RAM: Random Access Memory.  See Memory.

Rootkit: You've probably heard about this "new" threat in the news. It's not terribly new, but it is becoming more widespread. Rootkits compromise your operating system. In other words they get right into the core of Windows and they prevent Windows from disclosing their presence to you or to any antivirus or antispyware tool. Once you've gotten one, unless you specifically know what it is and have the in-depth instructions and ability to remove it, your best bet is to reformat your hard drive and start over. Rootkits are another reason that backups are so vital!

Software: When we speak of software, we're talking about those things in your computer that you cannot touch. A metaphor might be that the physical computer is a brain, and the software is the thought. That would be an unfortunate metaphor though, since it could give you the impression that computers can think -- and in fact, they cannot. They are automatons that can only do what you, or a programmer, tells them to do. But if a programmer is really good, he can make it seem like the computer is thinking! In any case, your operating system is software and your various programs are software. Compare to hardware, which would be your Pentium processor, your monitor, keyboard, printer, etc., all those parts that you can touch.

Spyware: Spyware are small applications installed on your machine, with or without your knowledge or consent, that track your activities on the Internet and report back to their originator things such as what links you click on, what ads you have seen or clicked on. This is used to send you advertising and to pop up ads during your browsing. Installing these applications without informing you of the fact is illegal -- but we know that doesn't stop everybody. However, many spyware vendors do inform you of the fact but may hide the information inside of a license agreement, which almost nobody reads. Occasionally they will be up front about it on the website. Spyware is usually an additional piece of software to some free software you want to download. Examples would be various search bars or free utilities. Not all search bars or free utilities have spyware in them. You have to know which ones do and which ones don't, or you need to read all the fine print and the license agreement.

Spyware creates real problems for your computer, however, in addition to violating your privacy. (And don't dismiss the possibility that although the intent of spyware is to sell you goods and services, once some program has the ability to send out information from your machine, it could be abused.) I see more problems from spyware today than I see from computer viruses. Spyware can slow your machine down to a crawl; it can pop up windows on your machine at a great rate, making it impossible to surf the web; it can also completely break your internet access. Because there are so many good anti-spyware programs today, the spyware vendors are getting more crafty about how they install their programs and protect them from removal. There are forms of spyware today that cannot be removed by any automated process. Some require a reformat of your hard drive to get rid of them. So the best way to deal with spyware, is to prevent it from being installed in the first place.  See my article on Computer Security.

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