Personal computing

Terms related to personal computers, including definitions about computers sold as consumer products and words and phrases about laptops, tablets and smartphones.
  • What is user-generated content and why is it important? - User-generated content (UGC) is published information that an unpaid contributor provides to a website.
  • What is virtual reality? How it's used and how it will evolve - Virtual reality, or VR, is a simulated three-dimensional (3D) environment that lets users explore and interact with a virtual surrounding in a way that approximates reality, as it's perceived through the users' senses.
  • What is voice recognition and how does it work? - Voice or speaker recognition is the ability of a machine or program to receive and interpret dictation or to understand and perform spoken commands.
  • WhatsApp - WhatsApp is a free cross-platform messaging service.
  • whitelist (allowlist) - A whitelist (allowlist) is a cybersecurity strategy that approves a list of email addresses, IP addresses, domain names or applications, while denying all others.
  • wiki - A wiki is a web-based collaborative platform that enables users to store, create and modify content in an organized manner.
  • Windows 7 - Windows 7 is the Microsoft Windows operating system (OS) released commercially in October 2009 as the successor to Windows Vista.
  • Windows as a service - Windows as a service is the approach Microsoft introduced with Windows 10 to deploy, update and service the operating system.
  • Windows event log - The Windows event log is a detailed record of system, security and application notifications stored by the Windows operating system that is used by administrators to diagnose system problems and predict future issues.
  • Windows key (winkey) - The Windows key (winkey) is a button on a Windows computer keyboard.
  • Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) - Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is a specification for a set of communication protocols to standardize the way wireless devices, such as mobile phones and radio transceivers, can be used for internet access, including email, the web, newsgroups and instant messaging.
  • World Wide Web (WWW) - The World Wide Web -- also known as the web, WWW or W3 -- refers to all the public websites or pages that users can access on their local computers and other devices through the internet.
  • WXGA - WXGA, which stands for wide XGA, is a term used in product specifications to describe a display screen that is appropriate for business but is also suitable for watching DVDs.
  • WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) - WYSIWYG (pronounced wiz-ee-wig) is a type of editing software that allows users to see and edit content in a form that appears as it would when displayed on an interface, webpage, slide presentation or printed document.
  • XACML (Extensible Access Control Markup Language) - XACML (Extensible Access Control Markup Language) is an attribute-based access control policy language (ABAC) or XML-based language, designed to express security policies and access requests to information.
  • XML (Extensible Markup Language) - XML (Extensible Markup Language) is used to describe data.
  • XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language) - XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language) is a family of standards that specifies how to define Extensible Markup Language (XML) document transformation and presentation.
  • yak shaving - Yak shaving is programming lingo for the seemingly endless series of small tasks that have to be completed before the next step in a project can move forward.
  • zero client - Zero client, also known as ultrathin client, is a server-based computing model in which the end user's computing device has no local storage.
  • Zoom fatigue (virtual meeting fatigue) - Zoom fatigue, also known as 'virtual meeting fatigue,' is the feeling of exhaustion that often occurs after attending a series of virtual video meetings.