Question:    I'm confused by MegaHertz, MegaBytes, GigaHertz, etc. What do all these things mean? Are these terms something I should know?

Answer:     Yes, you should know and understand these terms as they influence the price and performance of your computer.

Let's start with 'MegaHertz' which is abbreviated 'MHz'. This is a measure of speed, and in our usage it refers to the speed of the processor chip, such as an Intel or AMD processor chip.

One 'hertz' is one cycle per second, meaning the processor chip performs one cycle of an operation or request you have made of the computer. One MegaHertz is one million cycles per second, and 800 MegaHertz is 800 million cycles per second. A one GigaHertz chip can perform one thousand million (or one billion) cycles per second.

These speeds quickly become more than we can comprehend, but the processor chips do achieve these speeds. Almost all home computers have only one processor chip, and the computer often takes it's name from the make and speed of this chip. For example, an 'Intel Pentium III - 800 MHz' (MegaHertz), or an 'Intel Pentium 4 - 3.2 GHz' (GigaHertz).

Obviously, the higher the 'hertz' number, the faster (and more expensive) the processor chip. However, this chip alone does not determine the overall speed and performance of your computer. It is the biggest single contributor, but the amount and speed of the RAM (random access memory), the access time of your hard drive and the amount of RAM on your video card, among other things, partake in the overall performance of your computer.

Now, let's consider MegaBytes which is abbreviated 'Meg'. This is a measure of size.

One 'byte' is one character, like those found on your keyboard. Examples of one byte would be the letter 'Q', or 'g', or numbers like '3' or '8', or symbols like '$' or '#'. Each of these letters, numbers and symbols require one byte for storage. One kilobyte is 1,000 bytes, one megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes and one gigabyte is 1,000,000,000 bytes.

But how can we relate to these figures. Let's consider that the standard floppy disk contains enough space to store 1.44 megabytes or 1,440,000 bytes. To gain perspective, let's understand the average typed, double spaced,  8 1/2" x 11" page of text contains 2,000 bytes or 2 kilobytes. So if a floppy disk can hold 1,440,000 bytes, it can hold approximately 700 pages of typed text. And a gigabyte of storage could hold 500,000 pages of typed text.

In summary, megahertz is a measure of speed, usually associated with processor chips, and megabytes are a measure of size, usually associated with the amount of RAM or the size of the Hard Drive, or any other unit of storage such as the currently popular jump drives and .mp3 players.

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