Posts Tagged ‘computer terms’

what printer driver

Most people don’t really understand a lot of computer jargon, and the word ‘driver’ is no exception. Maybe as a result you’ve done web searches for things like: “definition driver”, or something like that and hoped for understandable answers.

Of course, I’m not criticizing you — if you’ve always been confused by the word, it’s only because it was never explained to you in a way that actually made sense.

Keep reading and you’ll be surprised how much sense it makes.

I have a simple way to explain it that will just make sense for you. Making sense of computer terms like ‘driver’ can be easy with the right explanation. By the end of this article, you’ll understand it better than the average person.

First off, just to make sure we all we’re all on the same page, allow me to take a moment to explain the difference between “hardware” and “software”.

It’s really pretty easy — “hardware” refers to all of the tangible pieces of equipment, like your mouse, your screen, the hard drive, etc.

“Software” would be all of the parts of the computer that you can’t really see or touch directly. Software would include things like Microsoft Word, a Web browser, Windows or the Mac OS, plus all of your personal files like specific emails, photos, music, etc.

Think about it this way: hardware is like your brain, a physical part of your body, while software is like your mind or your thoughts — the non-physical part of yourself.

Software runs on hardware, just like your thoughts “run on” your brain.

Understand? Now let’s talk more specifically about drivers.

Here’s the easy way to get what a driver is. Pretend every piece of hardware, including your printer, your mouse, and so on, talks a different language.

So one speaks French, another one speaks English, a different one Cantonese, etc.

So when you plug in a new printer and power it on, your PC says hi and the printer answers in a foreign tongue the computer doesn’t understand.

So it needs an interpreter.

And when I say interpreter, I mean just like in the real world, like if a foreign diplomat arrives in the country but doesn’t understand the local language. The diplomat needs an interpreter to help them communicate with the locals.

That, simply put, is what a driver is — an interpreter that helps your computer talk to a specific piece of equipment. And (generally speaking) you need a different interpreter for all of the equipment that you connect to the computer.

Get it?

Now at times, the driver may be “preinstalled” on your computer (in other words, the computer already has the interpreter ready and waiting in case it’s needed) and other times, it needs to either be installed from a disk, or gotten from the Internet, and then installed on the computer.

But no matter what, the computer needs that driver before it can talk to the printer or whatever other thing you may have attached to your computer.

And, simply speaking, that’s what a driver is.

Does anyone know what these terms mean? and wat they have 2 do w/ computers? (art design) array, loop, variable, constant, function

Answer:
array is an object that holds a set of primitives. a loop is a construct that continuously executes a statement a variable is an object that changes in value a constant is an object that never changes in value after being assigned a function is a code block that executes statements and is called by another function or program They are all computer programming fundamentals.