PCs Glossary: H

hard drive: A disk drive on your PC that can store the greatest amount of information and access it in the quickest manner; therefore, it’s the main source of permanent storage.

hardware: The physical part of a computer — anything you can touch and see, such as the computer console, monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

Headphones/speakers jack: The I/O jack where you plug in your headphones or external speakers.

headset: Headphones that include a built-in microphone for online communications and game playing.

hibernate: A computer function by which it saves all the computer’s memory (everything the system is doing), then turns the computer off.

hub: A common connection point for devices in a network.

Hyper-Threading: A feature of certain Pentium processors that makes one physical CPU appear as two logical CPUs, overlapping two instruction streams in order to achieve a gain in performance.