Select the first letter of the word from the list above to jump to appropriate section of the glossary or type the term on which you want to search.

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thermal printer

a low cost printer that produces characters and images using heat applied to a special type of paper. Calculators and some fax machines employ this technology.

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thrash

to move about wildly without accomplishing anything useful. With computers, thrashing occurs when too many programs are open and the system does not have the resources to accommodate them all. Closing one or all applications will get things under control. A more permanent solution is to install more memory.

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thread

a series of posted messages of the same topic found on a bulletin board or newsgroup. It is often possible for a user to call up all of the messages associated with the original.

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three-dimensional audio

a method of enhancing stereo sound. A device listens to the sound while evaluating factors such as room acoustics. It then sends this information back to the computer and the sound card makes adjustments, producing optimal sound.

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three-dimensional graphics

the process by which software makes two dimensional images appear to be three dimensional. 3-D graphics are essential for many games and other animation. The process requires a large amount of memory and a special microprocessor.

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thumbnail

1. refers to a preview of an image and is usually considerably smaller than the actual image. When viewing images such as photos and clipart stored on a CD-ROM or floppy disk, the user is sometimes shown a smaller sample (preview) that allows her to either continue on through the samples, or enlarge the preview image to display the entire graphic.
2. on a Web page, a small image that contains a hyperlink. When clicked with a mouse, the image is enlarged.

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TIFF

(Tagged Image File Format) a popular file format for saving bitmap images on both PCs and Macintosh computers. The TIFF format can store large images, black and white graphics, unlimited color, and can display an image in any resolution. TIFF files are identified by the .TIF file extension.

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tilde

the keyboard symbol ( ~ ).

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Tillamook

an Intel processor designed for use in portable computers. The Tillamook chip is a version of the Pentium that runs at more than 200 MHz.

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time out

after waiting for an answer, a program or hardware device will often display a time out message and abandon the function. For example, when accessing computerized stock quotes on the telephone, the program will ask for the user’s account number. If it isn’t given within a certain period of time, say 30 seconds, the computer might return the user to the main menu or even disconnect.