A Glossary of Computer Terms

by

David Lubar

For those of you baffled by all the hardware and software jargon, here's an inside look at what the phrases really mean:

Easy to Use -- The programmer got pretty good at using it while he was testing it for bugs.

User Friendly -- Instead of saying, "File not found," the program tells you, "Sorry, file not found."

Fast -- Not as slow as it used to be.

Extremely fast -- Bearable as long as you're not in a hurry.

Lightning fast -- See extremely fast.

Active Matrix Display -- Something inside sort of moves around, but we're not sure what.

Passive Matrix Display -- It was active, but it broke.

Ergonomically designed -- designed

While Supplies Last -- If we ever get rid of these, we're throwing a party.

Limited Quantity -- Until we get rid of these, we can't store anything else.

Hot! -- We've moved half of them, but the warehouse is still jammed.

Special purchase -- Boy did we screw up this time.

New, Low prices -- nobody bought one in ages.

Too many features to list -- We sort of lost track of what we did.

Toner Sold Separately -- Many of our customers never get the printer to run, so we decided to offer this as an optional purchase.

Works automatically with no user intervention -- It doesn't do a thing, but you'll never know.

Constructed for the value-minded consumer -- It will break the first time you breath on it.

Professional quality -- your company is paying for it so we can jack up the price far beyond the point any sane person would accept.

Toll-free technical support -- You get to listen to hours of music while you wait on hold, and it won't cost you a penny. If you have a speaker phone, you can use this service to replace your radio.

High performance -- It probably works most of the time.

New and Improved -- We finally found that really bad bug we've been working around for years.

World's Most Comprehensive CD ROM -- there's so much stuff crammed on here, you'll never find any of it.