TechMan has been looking at ads for a new computer and noticing how much doublespeak and acronym abuse they contain.

So in the interest of clarity, here is an explanation of some of the terms used.

Dual core, Core Duo, Core 2 Duo -- A dual core computer has two processors on the same chip. The processor is the workhorse of the computer, so this makes for a faster, more power-efficient computer, particularly when doing multiple tasks at one time (multitasking).

Core Duo is Intel's name for its first dual-core chip. Core2Duo is Intel's somewhat confusing name for its newest dual-core chip.

The AMD chip company also makes a dual-core chip called the Athlon. Apple now uses Intel chips.

Quad-core chips (with four cores) are now hitting the market.

SDRAM stands for synchronous dynamic random access memory and refers to the memory chips in your computer.

DDR2 in front of SDRAM stands for double data rate 2. DDR made memory twice as fast. DDR2 makes it faster yet. The whole thing refers to how much data is transferred on each cycle of the computer's clock.

Gigahertz (Ghz) vs. gigabyte (GB) -- These two terms can be confusing. Gigahertz refers to speed, usually of the computer's main processor. Gigabyte refers to capacity, either of the computer's on-board memory (RAM) or of the hard drive.

A computer with a higher Ghz rating will be faster, while a computer or a hard drive with a higher gigabyte (GB) number will hold more data. But more gigabytes of RAM also makes the computer faster. So the most powerful computers will have the highest Ghz chips and the most GB of RAM.

DVD +RW and -RW -- DVD disks can now have data put on them, and this is called being recordable or rewritable (thus the R and RW).

There are two main formats of rewritable/recordable DVDs, DVD-R/DVD-RW and DVD+R/DVD+RW.

Most computers have drives with both the plus and the minus sign before the R or RW, meaning they can handle both formats.

Megapixels -- Pixels (picture elements) in a camera refer to digital light sensors, and cameras are rated by the number of megapixels (a million pixels) they have. Manufacturers would have us believe the more megapixels the better, but that is not strictly true.

Digital sensor area is also important. The more expensive cameras have a larger one which means, with the same number of pixels, each pixel is larger and can take in more light. The number of pixels determines how big a print can be made and still be sharp.