John Cletheroe's
PC And Internet Hints

PC And Internet Glossary - Including File Extensions - S

S-Video

A type of video signal output by some video boards, suitable for input to televisions. S-Video/SCART cables are available, which can be used to connect an S-Video output from a PC video board to a television's SCART socket. Whether an acceptable image is displayed on the television depends on the hardware at each end, and its settings.

S/MIME

Secure Multi-Purpose Internet Messaging Extensions. An Internet protocol for sending and receiving encrypted and therefore supposedly secure email messages. Microsoft KnowledgeBase article 195477 has more information on the subject.

S.M.A.R.T.

Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology. A system built into many modern hard disk drives which monitors the disk's temperature and other performance factors and reports any problems.

S3M

File extension. S3M files appear to be very similar to MID files (see that entry) but not identical. While WinAmp can play S3M files with their original extensions it will not play them if their extensions are changed to MID. S3M files are created by the Screamtracker program, which I think is a MIDI authoring/composer/editor program. S3M files are very similar to MOD files created by the Protracker program (which I think is a MIDI authoring/composer/editor program for the Commodore Amiga computer). If the extension of an S3M file is changed to MOD then WinAmp will still play it. I do not know whether S3M files can contain viruses or not; it seems unlikely.

Sample

Normally used to mean a sound sample, i.e. a WAV file or similar.

SAN

Storage Area Network. A type of network in which all servers can access all disk drives.

Sandbox

The area on a user's computer to which, in theory, a Java applet is restricted.

Sans Serif Font

Serifs are the little marks at each of each stroke of each character that are present in some fonts. A sans serif font is a font without serifs (from the French word sans, meaning "without"). Sans serif fonts general look "more modern" and "cleaner" than serif fonts. It is very much a matter of opinion as to which type of font is easier to read. The most commonly used sans serif font in Windows is Arial.

SAP

  1. An accounting system used by some large companies, and also the name of the company which publishes it.

    Opinion: SAP appears to have an extremely old fashioned user interface. I've only seen SAP operating with underpowered computers over a very slow wide area network, which was certainly a far from pleasant experience for the users. It may be better with adequate hardware and communication links.

  2. Service Advertising Protocol. A service which broadcasts details of shared files, directories, and printers to other computers on a network.

SAS

Serial Attached SCSI. A new (Nov-04) method of connecting hard disks to system board.

SATA

Serial ATA. An interface used by some modern hard disks. Generally said to be faster than the traditional parallel IDE interface. Presumably a special type of system board is required - one with the correct interface chips and with sockets for SATA cables.

SB

  1. SoundBlaster. A range of sound boards manufactured by Creative Labs. Generally regarded as the standard for sound boards.

  2. System Board.

SBE

Stream Buffer Engine. A component of Windows XP.

SBFM:

Microsoft KnowledgeBase article title prefix for articles relating to Microsoft's Small Business Financial Manager, an optional add-on for the Excel spreadsheet program.

SBS

Small Business Server. A Microsoft product.

SBSI

Step By Step Interactive. A Microsoft interactive training product, or in other words a tutorial program (I think).

Scalability

The ability (or otherwise) of a product to perform with a large amount of data, a large number of users, in a large network, etc.

Scaleable Font

A font which can be enlarged without any significant deterioration in its quality - curves will still appear as smooth curves and not as jagged steps. TrueType fonts are scaleable fonts. Bitmapped (raster) fonts are not scaleable (they can be enlarged, but the results look poor).

Scanner

A device which scans a printed image and produces a bitmapped image file of it.

SCF

File extension. Shell Command File. A Windows Explorer command file, for example, the "Desktop" icon in the Quick Launch Bar. I do not know whether SCF files can contain viruses or not.

SCL

Software Compatibility List. A list of programs with which an operating system is compatible.

SCM

Service Control Manager. A feature of Windows which handles a type of background program called a service.

SCR

File extension. Screen saver program file. SCR files are exactly the same as EXE files except that their programs must include the additional routines required to allow them to act as screen savers. CHM files can contain instructions which could perform undesirable operations on a computer. They can also contain viruses.

Screamtracker

See "S3M".

Script

A sequence of commands written in a programming language.

SCSI

"skussy". Small Computer Systems Interface. A method of connecting peripheral devices to a computer. Much faster than using the printer port; somewhat slower than IDE.

SCT

File extension. Windows Script Component.

SD

Secure Digital. A type of removable memory card.

SDI

Single Document Interface. The standard style of Windows program, in which only one data files can opened at a time. Opening another data file automatically closes the previous one. A few programs, notably Word and Excel, use the MDI (Multiple Document Interface) in which more than one data file can be open at the same time. The difference between SDI and MDI is extremely confusing to most users.

SDK

Software Development Kit. I think this is an optional extra for some Microsoft products, for advanced users. Depending on the product, I think an SDK can consist of any combination of a printed manual (probably rare these days), documentation on CD-ROM and/or software. In some cases, especially Java, an SDK can include a program development environment (a program in which you can edit and compile programs). Microsoft also use the phrase "Platform SDK" which I do not know the meaning of. I don't know if a Java Development Kit (JDK) is exactly the same as a Software Development Kit for Java (SDK for Java) - perhaps this depends on whether it is published by Microsoft or Sun Microsystems. The term IDE (Integrated Development Environment, i.e. a combined program editor and interpreter or compiler) is related.

SDRAM

"Ess - dee - ram". Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory. SDRAM modules have 168 pin connectors. DDR SDRAM modules have 184 pin connectors. DDR2 SDRAM modules have 240 pin connectors.

SDVXD

A temporary disk cache mechanism created while Windows starts up and destroyed when this process completes, leading a spurious error message in the Bootlog.txt file. See Microsoft KnowledgeBase article 127970 for details of this and other misleading spurious error messages in Bootlog.txt.

SE

In the suffix after the model number of an ATI video board, this means that the board is a special cut-down version supplied to computer manufacturers for fitting in their products. The power of the SE version of a video board may be only half that of the normal board. The full range of suffixes is SE (much less powerful than standard), LE (much less powerful than standard), no suffix (standard), Pro (more powerful than standard), XT (much more powerful than standard) and XT PE (very much more powerful than standard).

Search Engine

A special and extremely valuable type of web site which responds to queries with lists of web pages which are likely to contain relevant information on a particular subject.

Secondary Cache

See "Cache".

Security Update

Microsoft KnowledgeBase article 824684 includes the following definition of this term as used by Microsoft: "A security update is a broadly released fix for a product-specific, security-related vulnerability. Security vulnerabilities are rated based on their severity. The severity rating is indicated in the Microsoft security bulletin as critical, important, moderate, or low." Each Microsoft security update is described in a Microsoft Security Bulletin. Microsoft Security Bulletin numbers have the format MSyy-nnn, where yy is the two-digit year number and nnn is the security bulletin sequential number within that year.

Selecting

Highlighting a section of text, a group of graphical or other objects, etc, prior to performing an operation on them.

Windows provides several means of selecting, such as Click (to select one item), SHIFT/Drag (to select a section of text or a group of items) and CTRL/Drag (to select or deselect an individual item without disturbing the rest of the selection).

Individual programs sometimes provide additional means of selecting, such as Microsoft Word's facility to click, drag, double-click or triple-click in the left margin to select one line, a set of lines, a paragraph or the entire document, respectively.

See also "Typing Replaces Selection".

Semi-colon

;

SEO

  1. Search Engine Optimisation. The inclusion of dummy keywords, meta tags, etc in attempts to fool search engines into giving web pages higher rankings than their material deserves. SEO is largely self-defeating as all popular search engines are fully aware of these techniques and disregard them or actually reduce a page's ranking if they are detected.

  2. Senior Executive Officer (in a company).

Serial ATA

An interfacing system for devices such as hard disks and CD readers/writers inside a PC. Currently the IDE interfacing system is universally used but some people believe it may eventually be replaced by Serial ATA.

Serial Overrun Errors

My modem log file normally reports a number of serial overrun errors for each online session. These seem to be a normal occurrence and no cause for alarm.

Serif Font

Serifs are the little marks which appear at the end of each stroke of each character in some fonts. A serif font is a font which has serifs. The most commonly used serif font in Windows is Times New Roman.

See also "Sans Serif Font".

Server

  1. A networked computer which stores files. Other computers, called clients or workstations, access these files via the network. Sometimes servers may also offer shared printing facilities.

  2. A program which runs on a server.

  3. In Microsoft OLE/ActiveX terminology, a shared file from which a software component such as an ActiveX control is obtained. Examples include DLL and OCX files.

Service

  1. A ubiquitous term in Outlook 97, for which I've never been able to find any proper definition or explanation.

  2. In Windows XP, a background program which runs without interacting with the user. The Windows equivalent of a TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) program. Windows XP has a large number of services.

Service Pack, Service Release (SP, SR)

Microsoft management/marketing jargon for a bug fix for a program. Microsoft KnowledgeBase article 824684 includes the following definition of this term as used by Microsoft: "A service pack is a tested, cumulative set of all hotfixes, security updates, critical updates, and updates. Service packs may also contain additional fixes for problems that are found internally since the release of the product and a limited number of customer-requested design changes or features."

SET

Secure Electronic Transactions. A standard for supposedly secure online transactions.

SFC

System File Checker. A feature in recent versions of Windows.

SFP

System File Protection. A feature in Windows ME. See Microsoft KnowledgeBase article 253571 for details.

SGRAM

A type of ram used in some video boards. Faster than SDRAM.

SGML

Standard Generalised Markup Language. Presumably a variant of HTML.

Shadowing

The maintaining of two or more copies of data, for example: Shadowing systems usually create and maintain the multiple copies automatically. Sophisticated logic is required to bring the copies into line with each other when recovering from failures.

Share

Sometimes used as a noun to mean "shared folder", in other words an area of disk space on a computer or to a device such as a printer connected to a computer, which is "shared" - in other words which can accessed by other users via a local area network. This is a particularly gruesome example of poor English, very similar to using the word "spend" to mean "expenditure".

SharePoint

Microsoft's current marketing in-word. To the average user, as utterly meaningless and irrelevant as its predecessors: "Active" and ".NET". According to one source: "SharePoint is a set of [software] technology products which allows us to manage our intellectual property (documents, presentations, etc.) and enables virtual teams to collaborate on the information."

On November 2004 Woody's Office Watch offered the following extremely useful explanation of what SharePoint is, written in English: "SharePoint is a web site for workers in a company so that they can work together on a project. There can be discussions, To Do lists, shared files and a lot more stored on a SharePoint site or sub-site. It's mainly intended for cooperating on projects but can also be used for managing social events, sports or any other group activity within a company. All of this can be useful for sharing documents with staff, however getting people to use SharePoint can be more of a challenge than getting it working! But once people are used to it, it's a wonderful boon to productivity."

Shareware

See "Register".

SHB

File extension. Shell Scrap object.

Shell

  1. In the days before Windows, a temporary exit from a program, made in order to perform an operating system command (to copy a file, make a new sub-directory, etc). Upon completing the command the user could return to the program which was in its previous state.

  2. A temporary exit from a pseudo operating system such as Windows to the real operating system (MS-DOS).

  3. An operating system's user interface, for example in Windows V3.1 the shell was (for most users) the Program Manager, PROGMAN.EXE.

  4. See also "Skin".

Shell Extension

I think this term refers to a program which installs itself as an extra option on the menu which appears when a file is right-clicked in Windows Explorer.

SHIFT

Two keys on the keyboard, often marked with outline upward pointing arrows, used to access upper-case letters and the symbols on the upper half of some keys.

Shockwave

A program used to create and play animations on some web pages.

Shortcut

  1. A pointer to a program or a file. Shortcuts can appear in the Start button menu and on the desktop (and elsewhere). When displayed as icons, shortcuts usually have a small curved arrow in the bottom left corner. Deleting a shortcut to a program or a file does not delete the program or file itself - which can often be very confusing. Shortcuts are very small files and so are a far superior approach than copying the program or file to several places on a hard disk. Windows 95's shortcuts are a development of Windows 3.1's program group icons and PIF files.

    See also "Indirection".

  2. In Windows, a means of accessing a menu option via the keyboard. For example, in almost all programs CTRL/X, CTRL/C and CTRL/V are keyboard shortcuts for Cut, Copy and Paste, respectively.

Shouting

Writing a document, email message or news group posting (etc) using all capital letters. DON'T DO IT.

SHS

File extension. Shell Scrap object.

SHT

File extension. Same as SHTM or SHTML.

SHTM

File extension. Same as HTM. I think the "S" prefix may indicate a supposedly secure page which uses SSL.

SHTTP

Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol. An add-on to HTTP which provides supposedly secure transmission.

Silverlight

A rival to Adobe Flash. Silverlight is published by Microsoft. Like Flash, Silverlight is a file format for animations and a freeware browser add-on/plug-in to play them.

SIMM

Single In-line Memory Module. A small removable printed circuit board with memory chips on one side only. The module has edge connectors and plugs into a special socket on the main system board or an expansion board. SIMM modules normally have connectors with either 30 pins or 72 pins.

Simulation

A type of program which simulates a physical situation. Simulations are often interesting and frequently very instructive and educational. Maxis publish a number of complex simulation games, one of the best being SimCity in which you play the role of the city manager, the computer simulating the activities of the city's citizens. Another excellent example is The Incredible Machine, in which you have a construct machines to achieve stated goals. Simulations frequently permit multiple solutions and in some cases even allow the user to choose what they are attempting to achieve, as in the classic "Hammurabi" simulation game. Many other simulation programs are available from other sources.

Single quote

Also called an apostrophe: ' .

Skin

An optional add-on to a program which changes its visual appearance but not its functionality. One of the first programs to use skins was WinAmp. A skin is sometimes called a shell or a UI (User Interface).

SKU

Store-Keeping Unit. Microsoft KnowledgeBase article 302663 has a little more information.

Skype

A VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephone system. Calls between two Skype users are free of charge but there is a charge for connection to a normal phone number. A headset (earphones and microphone) are required in order to use Skype. Depending on the type, headsets can be plugged into the computer's normal sound board sockets or a USB socket.

Skype is published by the same company as KaZaA, the infamous adware/spyware invested peer-to-peer music sharing system. According to most opinions, Skype is currently (Mar-05) free of any malicious software elements, but the program itself and its EULA (end user licence agreement) would permit the company to introduce infections whenever they might wish to.

Slash

  1. Forward slash: / (see that entry).

  2. Backslash: \ (see that entry).

SLIP

Serial Line Internet Protocol. A method of connecting to the Internet via a phone line.

See also "PPP" (which is the more common of the two options).

SMART

See "S.M.A.R.T.".

SMB

Server Message Block. A network protocol, fairly obscure as far as I know. According to one source its main function is to "transmit group policy information from domain controllers to newly logged on systems".

SME

Small to medium size enterprise (i.e. a small to medium size company). Generally defined as having between 20 and 500 employees.

SMTP

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Associated with email.

SND

File extension. Audio (sound) file. I do not know if SND files can contain viruses or not.

SNMP

Simple Network Management Protocol. A protocol used to monitor networks.

Soap

Kai's PhotoSoap is a very clever program which allows photographs to be edited. Unfortunately it suffers from a bizarre non-standard user interface.

SOAP

Simple Object Access Protocol. Most of the descriptions of SOAP that I have found have been written in Microsoft's zero information content management/marketing pseudo-technical language. SOAP appears to be part of .NET (see that entry). It seems that SOAP is a standard format for passing parameters between programs and subroutines held in separate files (DLL functions, for example), using XML.

Socket

A logical connection to a network. I think one socket has many ports (see "Ports").

Socket 7

A popular design of socket for processors in PC's.

Software Update

Microsoft KnowledgeBase article 824684 includes the following definition of this term as used by Microsoft: "A software update is any update, update rollup, service pack, feature pack, critical update, security update, or hotfix that is used to improve or to fix a software product that is released by Microsoft Corporation."

SOHO, SoHo

Small Office/Home Office.

Solution

A commercially available program. In many cases a "solution" is more of a problem than a solution. In the jargon of modern Microsoft programming languages a solution is a related set of programs (what would normally be called a project or a system), and a project is one program (and all the source code files associated with it).

Sonic

A publisher of CD burning software. Adaptec were taken over by Roxio, who in turn have been taken over by Sonic.

Source Code

The original, human readable form of a program, written in the programming language.

SourceForge

A web site http://www.sourceforge.net which is designed to allow groups of programmers to collaborate on software projects. The site has a number of features which are irrelevant and confusing for normal users. CVS (Concurrent Versions System) is a system which allows multiple programmers to work on the same project at the same time. RFE (Request For Enhancement) is a facility whereby improvements to programs can be requested. Most of the programs available on SourceForge are still in the very early stages of development. They often contain serious bugs. Documentation is usually extremely sparse and generally assumes a very high level of technical knowledge. SourceForge and the programs on it are very much by programmers, for programmers.

SP

Service Pack. Microsoft's name for a collection of bug fix patches and updates.

Space Bar

In a word processing program, don't use multiple spaces to position text. There is always a superior method of positioning text which is not only much simpler but will also make it easy to modify the text in the future.

Spam

Unsolicited junk email, or similar messages posted in news groups. Spam is always objectionable, sometimes highly so.

SPF

Sender Policy Framework. A Microsoft proprietary email anti-spam system.

SPI

Service Provider Interface.

Spider

A program run by a search engine to seek out and index web pages on other servers throughout the Internet. So called because it crawls the web.

SPP

Software Protection Platform. An extremely annoying anti-piracy system in Windows Vista, generally regarded by users as totally unacceptable.

SPX

Sequenced Packet Exchange. A network protocol for use with Novell NetWare networks instead of TCP.

Spy-Ware or Spyware

Any program which as well as its main functions, also secretly transmits information from the user's computer. This is sometimes referred as "phoning home", as the spy-ware program contacts its source.

This information may be relatively harmless, such as details of which web sites a user visits. On the other hand, it may be extremely dangerous, such as passwords, credit card numbers, bank account details and PIN numbers.

In many cases, spy-ware programs are actually separate from a main program, but installed by the main program's installation procedure. Spy-ware programs can be difficult to detect and difficult to uninstall.

LavaSoft's excellent Ad-Aware program will detect the presence of ad-ware on a computer. I think the program may also detect spy-ware. Unfortunately the URL for LavaSoft's web site frequently changes but any search on the Internet should find a current source of their program.

Hardware or software firewalls should detect the operation of spy-ware programs.

Square Brackets

[ and ] (see that entry).

SQL

"ess - queue - el" or occasionally "sequel". Standard Query Language. A programming language used by some modern database programs. Although SQL was originally advertised by Oracle as being easy for non-programmers to use, that preposterous claim was rapidly debunked. Apart from its arcane and pedantic syntax, SQL suffers from queries written in the language taking vastly different lengths of time to complete depending on the precise way in which they are written, at least in Oracle. The use of SQL with two or more related files is particularly complicated.

SSDP

Simple Service Discovery Protocol. Used by universal plug and play for network device discovery.

See also "GENA".

SSH

Secure Shell or Secure Socket Shell. An Internet protocol which provides access to a Unix/Linux shell session on a server, allowing the server to be given command line instructions in the same way as DOS does on a PC. SSH requires an SSH client program to be run on the PC. A freeware example of such program is PuTTY, obtainable from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty (external link verified Jan-08). An administrator username and password for the server is also required in order to be able to log in to it with SSH.

SSID

Service Set Identifier. A code attached to all packets on a wireless network to identify each packet as belonging to that network. All wireless devices attempting to communicate with each other must share the same SSID. Effectively the name of the wireless network.

SSL

Secure Socket Layer. SSL sets up a supposedly secure link between your PC and a web server, for the transmitting of personal information required in order to make purchases, such as credit card numbers, in an encrypted form. TLS is a similar system.

See also "SHTTP".

Stack

  1. An area of memory used for data whose size can be determined when the program is compiled. A typical use for a stack is to store return addresses for nested subroutines and control information for nested loops, as a LIFO queue. If a poorly written program exits subroutines by GOTO instead of RETURN, or a loop by GOTO instead of dropping out of the NEXT command then the relevant entries on the stack will not be cleared down and eventually the stack will overflow. (The examples of commands are from traditional BASIC; other languages have similar commands.)

  2. A set of programs which operate together to enable a computer to connect to a network.

Standard

Something which one group of people want to impose on another group of people.

Stationary

In Outlook Express, a background image to an email message. I suspect that only recipients who use Outlook Express will see the background image.

Opinion: In my opinion, this is a rather silly idea since it makes email messages much larger and much less easy to read. Formatted documents are better sent as attachments.

STL

Standard Template Library. A set of standard library subroutines for C++ which adds facilities such as text strings and vectors (arrays whose number subscript range can be changed at runtime). I suspect these functions are introduced with the prefix std:: .

Store And Forward

A method of handling transactions on a network. Local computers accept transactions and forward them on to another computer via the network whenever that is possible. If forwarding is impossible for any reason (for example if the network is down or if the other computer is down) then the local computer will store the transactions for later transmission. While it seems an excellent idea in theory, making a store and forward system operate reliably is surprisingly difficult.

Streaming

A method of transmitting information, usually sound or video, over the Internet, so that the receiving program can start playing the information as soon as it starts to receive it, without having to wait for the entire file to be downloaded. Streaming is virtually irrelevant unless you have a very high speed connection to the Internet which doesn't involve any time-dependant phone or ISP charges. Real Audio is a well-known streaming audio file player program.

Sub-woofer

A large bass speaker connected to a PC's sound board output in addition to the two normal speakers which handle the middle and higher frequencies. A single speaker can be used for the bass since its stereo component is relatively unimportant.

Opinion: Sub-woofers seem of very marginal value to me. The quality of the normal speakers' high frequency response is far more important.

Subclass, Subclassing

Terms used in object oriented programming.

See "Inheritance".

Subdirectory

Any directory other than the root. Same as subfolder.

SubDreamer

A CMS (Content Management System).

Subnet Mask

As I understand it (and I may be wrong) a means by which computers on local area networks can use the same set of IP numbers without any conflicts, even if they are connected to each other (for example, via the Internet).

Subscribe

Some newcomers to the Internet may wrongly think that the word "subscribe" implies that a payment is required. This is not usually the case.

No payment is involved if you subscribe to the vast majority of email newsletters. If any payment is required, that will be made obvious. A small number of email newsletters occasionally ask their subscribers for voluntary donations but most are supported by their publishing company or by advertising.

No payment is involved if subscribe to any of the publicly available newsgroups.

If you are not asked to provide any information such as a credit card number, no payment is required.

Subscript

One or more characters written slightly below the level of the other characters, for example in chemical formulas such as H2O.

Super Video CD

See "Video CD".

Superscript

One or more characters written slightly above the level of the other characters, for example to represent exponentiation (indexes, powers) in mathematical expressions such as x2 and X3.

Support, Supported

  1. Functional or operative, in a particular situation. "Version 3 of our program is supported in Windows ME".

  2. Eligible for personal assistance from the manufacturer or publisher. There may or may not be a charge for such assistance.

  3. Eligible for impersonal assistance from the manufacturer or publisher, usually in the form of patches (bug fixes) and other updates, plus the publication of technical articles describing problems and possible solutions, on the company's web site. "Support will cease at the end of 2003."

  4. The department in a company which handles problems reported by customers. "The server is down again. Put me through to Support please."

  5. A company which provides hardware maintenance facilities for computers.

Surface Mount

A method of attaching electronic components to a printed circuit board by soldering them directly to the surface of the board, rather than by connecting them to posts on the board or through holes in the board. Presumably surface mount is a less expensive manufacturing process.

SUS

(Microsoft) Software Update Services.

Suse

A version of the Linux operating system.

SUWIN

Setup For Windows. The Windows Setup (i.e. installation) program in Windows 98 and possibly some other versions of Windows.

SVG

Scalable Vector Graphics. A markup language for describing two-dimensional vector graphics, based on XML.

Swap File

The disk file which is used to hold data and thereby simulate RAM in a virtual memory system. Also called the paging file.

SWF

File extension. A compiled Adobe Macromedia Flash application. From "Shockwave Flash".

Switch

An optional parameter included after a DOS command or program, which modifies the operation of the command or program. For example the /P switch causes the DIR command to output its results one screenfull at a time. Switches vary from command to command and program to program. Sometimes a hyphen is used instead of a forward slash to prefix a switch - it depends on the program.

SWT

Standard Widget Toolkit. Probably something to do with writing programs in the Java language, I think.

SX

See "DX".

Symbol Font

A font which contains graphics characters instead of the usual letters, digits and punctuation marks. Examples of symbol fonts include Symbol, WingDings and Marlett (the last contains the maximise, minimise and close button symbols used in Windows).

SYS

"sizzz". File extension. Windows system file.

System Caret

See "Caret".

System Board

The main printed circuit board of a computer. Also called the motherboard.

System Tray

The collection of icons usually located on the righthand end of the Taskbar, such as the clock, the volume control/mixer, perhaps an anti-virus program, perhaps a screen resolution change facility, etc. These programs are loaded in memory and running on the computer in the background, and can be thought of as the Windows equivalent of DOS's TSR's (terminate and stay resident programs). In Windows XP the System Tray is called the Notification Area.
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