virus — A program that is designed to inconvenience you or to destroy data stored on your computer. A virus program moves from one computer to another

through an infected disk, software downloaded from the Internet, or e-mail attachments. When an infected program starts, its embedded virus also starts.

A common type of virus is a boot virus, which is stored in the boot sectors of a floppy disk. If the floppy disk is left in the drive when the computer is shut down

and then turned on, the computer is infected when it reads the boot sectors of the floppy disk expecting to find the operating system. If the computer is

infected, the boot virus may replicate itself onto all the floppy disks that are read or written in that computer until the virus is eradicated.

V — volt — The measurement of electric potential or electromotive force. One V appears across a resistance of 1 ohm when a current of 1 ampere flows

through that resistance.

W — watt — The measurement of electrical power. One W is 1 ampere of current flowing at 1 volt.

WHr — watt-hour — A unit of measure commonly used to indicate the approximate capacity of a battery. For example, a 66-WHr battery can supply 66 W of

power for 1 hour or 33 W for 2 hours.

wallpaper — The background pattern or picture on the Windows desktop. Change your wallpaper through the Windows Control Panel. You can also scan in

your favorite picture and make it wallpaper.

WLAN — wireless local area network.

write-protected — Files or media that cannot be changed. Use write-protection when you want to protect data from being changed or destroyed. To write-

protect a 3.5-inch floppy disk, slide its write-protect tab to the open position.

WWAN — wireless wide area network.

WXGA — wide-aspect extended graphics array — A video standard for video cards and controllers that supports resolutions up to 1280 x 800.

XGA — extended graphics array — A video standard for video cards and controllers that supports resolutions up to 1024 x 768.

ZIF — zero insertion force — A type of socket or connector that allows a computer chip to be installed or removed with no stress applied to either the chip or

its socket.

Zip — A popular data compression format. Files that have been compressed with the Zip format are called Zip files and usually have a filename extension

of .zip. A special kind of zipped file is a self-extracting file, which has a filename extension of .exe. You can unzip a self-extracting file by double-clicking it.

Zip drive — A high-capacity floppy drive developed by Iomega Corporation that uses 3.5-inch removable disks called Zip disks. Zip disks are slightly larger than

regular floppy disks, about twice as thick, and hold up to 100 MB of data.

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