If you're new to the computer world and need a tutorial on computer basics, or have very little experience with the internal workings of a computer, then you should take a little time to familiarize yourself with these general terms and concepts.

I've listed several key terms below that you should be familiar with. The definitions are excerpts from Wikipedia.org. If you would like to drill down further and learn more about a particular component, just click on the term and you'll be directed to the Wikipedia page describing it. You can also follow this link to start reviewing computer basics.

AGP: The Accelerated Graphics Port (also called Advanced Graphics Port, often shortened to AGP) is a high-speed point-to-point channel for attaching a graphics card to a computer's motherboard, primarily to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. Between 2004 and 2007, AGP was replaced by PCI Express. As of 2007 new AGP cards and motherboards are still available to buy, however they are becoming much less common.

ATA: Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) is a standard interface for connecting storage devices such as hard disks, solid state disks and CD-ROM drives inside personal computers. The standard is maintained by X3/INCITS committee T13. Many synonyms and near-synonyms for ATA exist, including abbreviations such as IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) and ATAPI (Advanced Technology Attachment Packet Interface). Also, with the market introduction of Serial ATA in 2003, the original ATA was retroactively renamed Parallel ATA (PATA).

ATX: The ATX (for Advanced Technology Extended) form factor was created by Intel in 1995. It was the first big change in computer case and motherboard design in many years. ATX overtook AT completely as the default form factor for new systems. ATX addressed many of the AT form factor's annoyances that had frustrated system builders. Other standards for smaller boards (including microATX, FlexATX and mini-ITX) usually keep the basic rear layout but reduce the size of the board and the number of expansion slot positions. As of January 2007 the ATX form factor remains the industry standard for do-it-yourselfer.

Card Reader: See Memory Card Reader

CD-ROM: (an abbreviation of "Compact Disc read-only memory") is a Compact Disc that contains data accessible by a computer. While the Compact Disc format was originally designed for music storage and playback, the format was later adapted to hold any form of binary data. CD-ROMs are popularly used to distribute computer software, including games and multimedia applications, though any data can be stored (up to the capacity limit of a disc).

CD-R: A CD-R (Compact Disc-Recordable) is a variation of the Compact Disc invented by Philips and Sony. CD-R is a Write Once, Read Many (WORM) optical medium (though the whole disk does not have to be entirely written in the same session) and retains a high level of compatibility with standard CD readers (unlike CD-RW which can be rewritten but has much lower compatibility and the discs are considerably more expensive).

CD-RW: Compact Disc ReWritable (CD-RW) is a rewritable optical disc format

CPU: A central processing unit (CPU), or sometimes just processor, is a description of a class of logic machines that can execute computer programs.

DVD: (also known as "Digital Versatile Disc" or "Digital Video Disc") is a popular optical disc storage media format. Its main uses are video and data storage. Most DVDs are of the same dimensions as compact discs (CDs) but store more than six times as much data.

DVD-R; DVD+R: are DVD recordable formats. A DVD-R (+R) typically has a storage capacity of 4.71 GB

Firewire: FireWire is Apple Inc.'s brand name for the IEEE 1394 interface (although the 1394 standard also defines a backplane interface). It is also known as i.LINK (Sony's name) and DV (Panasonic's name, not to be confused with DV camcorder tapes). It is a serial bus interface standard, for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer, frequently used in a personal computer (and digital audio and digital video).

Floppy Disk (Floppy Disk Drive): A floppy disk is a data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible ("floppy") magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic shell. Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive or FDD

Graphics Card: See Video Card

Hard drive: A hard disk drive (HDD), commonly referred to as a hard drive, hard disk or fixed disk drive, is a non-volatile storage device which stores digitally encoded data on rapidly rotating platters with magnetic surfaces. Strictly speaking, "drive" refers to a device distinct from its medium, such as a tape drive and its tape, or a floppy disk drive and its floppy disk. Early HDDs had removable media; however, an HDD today is typically a sealed unit (except for a filtered vent hole to equalize air pressure) with fixed media.

Heat Sink: A heat sink (or heatsink) is an environment or object that absorbs and dissipates heat from another object using thermal contact (either direct or radiant). Heat sinks are used in a wide range of applications wherever efficient heat dissipation is required; major examples include refrigeration, heat engines and cooling electronic devices.

Internet: The Internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked web pages and other resources of the World Wide Web (WWW).

Jump Drive: See USB Flash Drive

Media Card (Memory Card): A memory card or flash memory card is a solid-state electronic flash memory data storage device used with digital cameras, handheld and Mobile computers, telephones, music players, video game consoles, and other electronics.

Memory (RAM): Random access memory (usually known by its acronym, RAM) is a type of computer data storage. Today it takes the form of integrated circuits that allow the stored data to be accessed in any order, i.e. at random. The word random thus refers to the fact that any piece of data can be returned in a constant time, regardless of its physical location and whether or not it is related to the previous piece of data.

Memory Card Reader: A memory card reader is a device, typically having a USB interface, for accessing the data on a memory card such as a CompactFlash (CF), Secure Digital (SD) or MultiMediaCard (MMC). Most card readers also offer write capability, and together with the card, this can function as a pen drive.

Motherboard: A motherboard is the central or primary circuit board making up a complex electronic system, such as a modern computer. It is also known as a mainboard, baseboard, system board, planar board or, on Apple computers, a logic board, and is sometimes abbreviated as mobo.

Network: A computer network is an interconnection of a group of computers.

Network Interface Card (NIC): A network card, network adapter, LAN Adapter or NIC (network interface card) is a piece of computer hardware designed to allow computers to communicate over a computer network.

Operating System: An operating system (OS) is the software that manages the sharing of the resources of a computer and provides programmers with an interface used to access those resources. An operating system processes system data and user input, and responds by allocating and managing tasks and internal system resources as a service to users and programs of the system. At the foundation of all system software, an operating system performs basic tasks such as controlling and allocating memory, prioritizing system requests, controlling input and output devices, facilitating computer networking and managing files. Most operating systems come with an application that provides an interface for managing the operating system. Common contemporary desktop OSes are Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and Solaris.

PATA: See ATA

Parallel port: A parallel port is a type of interface found on computers (personal and otherwise) for connecting various peripherals. It is also known as a printer port or Centronics port . The IEEE 1284 standard defines the bi-directional version of the port.

Pen Drive: See USB Flash Drive

PCI: The Peripheral Component Interconnect, or PCI Standard (in practice almost always shortened to PCI), specifies a computer bus for attaching peripheral devices to a computer motherboard.

PCI Express: PCI Express, officially abbreviated as PCI-E or PCIe, is a computer expansion card interface format introduced by Intel in 2004. PCI Express was designed to replace the general-purpose PCI expansion bus, the high-end PCI-X bus and the AGP graphics card interface.

PCI-X: PCI-X (Peripheral Component Interconnect Extended) is a computer bus and expansion card standard designed to supersede PCI. It is a double-wide version of PCI, running at up to four times the clock speed, but is otherwise similar in electrical implementation and uses the same protocol. It has itself been replaced in modern designs by the similar-sounding PCI Express, which features a very different logical design, mostly notably being a "narrow but fast" serial connection instead of a "wide but slow" parallel connection.

Plug-and-Play: Plug and play is a computer feature that allows the addition of a new device, normally a peripheral, without requiring reconfiguration or manual installation of device drivers. Modern plug-and-play includes both the traditional boot-time assignment of I/O addresses and interrupts to prevent conflicts and identify drivers, as well as hotplug systems such as USB and Firewire.

Power Supply: A computer power supply unit (Computer PSU) is the component that supplies power to a computer. More specifically, a power supply is typically designed to convert 100-120 V (North America and Japan) or 220-240 V (Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia) AC power from the mains to usable low-voltage DC power for the internal components of the computer.

RAID: RAID—which stands for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (as named by the inventors) or Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks (a name which later developed within the computing industry)—is a technology that employs the simultaneous use of two or more hard disk drives to achieve greater levels of performance, reliability, and/or larger data volume sizes.

SATA: Serial Advanced Technology Attachment is a computer bus primarily designed for transfer of data between a computer and mass storage devices such as hard disk drives and optical drives. It was designed as a successor to the legacy Advanced Technology Attachment standard (ATA), and is expected to eventually replace the older PATA technology. Serial ATA adapters and devices communicate over a high-speed serial cable.

Scanner: In computing, a scanner is a device that optically scans images, printed text, handwriting, or an object, and converts it to a digital image. Common examples found in offices are variations of the desktop (or flatbed) scanner where the document is placed on a glass window for scanning.

Sound Card: (also known as an audio card) is a computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to/from a computer under control of computer programs. Typical uses of sound cards include providing the audio component for multimedia applications such as music composition, editing video or audio, presentation/education, and entertainment (games). Many computers have sound capabilities built in, while others require additional expansion cards to provide for audio capability.

Software: Computer software is a general term used to describe a collection of computer programs, procedures and documentation that perform some tasks on a computer system. The term includes application software such as word processors which perform productive tasks for users, system software such as operating systems, which interface with hardware to provide the necessary services for application software, and middleware which controls and co-ordinates distributed systems.

Thumb Drive: See USB Flash Drive

USB: Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a serial bus standard to interface devices. USB was designed to allow many peripherals to be connected using a single standardized interface socket and to improve the plug-and-play capabilities by allowing devices to be connected and disconnected without rebooting the computer (hot swapping). Other convenient features include providing power to low-consumption devices without the need for an external power supply and allowing many devices to be used without requiring manufacturer specific, individual device drivers to be installed.

USB Flash Drive: A USB flash drive (or pen drive, thumb drive, jump drive) is a NAND-type flash memory data storage device integrated with a USB (universal serial bus) connector. USB flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, much shorter than a floppy disk (1-4 inches or 25-102 mm), and weigh less than 2 ounces (56g). Storage capacities range from 128MB to 16GB or more. Some allow 1 million write or erase cycles and have 10-year data retention, connected by USB 1.1 or USB 2.0 or both.

Video Capture Card: Video processing expansion card is a computer expansion card that allows a computer to receive television signals, record video, and/or playback video content. Video capture cards are a class of video capture devices designed to plug directly into expansion slots in personal computers and servers. Models from many manufacturers are available; all comply with one of the popular host bus standards including PCI, newer PCI Express (PCIe) or AGP bus interfaces.

Video Card: A video card, also referred to as a graphics accelerator card, display adapter, graphics card, and numerous other terms, is an item of personal computer hardware whose function is to generate and output images to a display. It operates on similar principles as a sound card or other peripheral devices.

Webcam: (web cameras) are small cameras, (usually, though not always, video cameras) whose images can be accessed using the World Wide Web, instant messaging, or a PC video conferencing application. The term webcam is also used to describe the low-resolution digital video cameras designed for such purposes, but which can also be used to record in a non-real-time fashion.

World Wide Web (WWW): The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, a user views Web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigates between them using hyperlinks.