Letter P
P2P                Peer to Peer communication such as workgroups or home networks.


PAL                Phase Alteration Line. European Standard for TV resolutions running 
                   at rates of 15.6kHz Horizontal and 50Hz Vertical. DblPAL runs at 
                   27.5KHz Horizontal. Standard size of 640 x 256.


Palm OS            An operating system used by Personal Organiser computers such as
                   those made by Palm.

Parallel           The parallel port used mainly to send data to printers. Uses
                   8 data lines instead of Serial's 1 line and therefore faster.
                   The PC can use standard,  bidirectional, ECP and EPP types.

Parallels          Parallels software for remote access or Desktop virtualisation on the Mac.

Pascal             An early programming language based on typed variables and 
                   structured code. A popular version for the PC was called
                   TurboPascal.

PATA               Parallel AT Attachment. Interface used by Hard Drives and Optical
                   Drives. Now superceded by SATA.

Paula              Custom Chip used in Amigas to manage floppy drives and produce sound.
									 
PC                 Personal Computer. Tends to refer to Intel based computers
                   running MS DOS or Windows. But can be valid for any single user
                   computer.

PC-DOS             IBM's version of the DOS operating system.

PCI                Peripheral Connection Interface. Standard expansion slot for
                   modern computers such as PCs, Macs and Suns. Replaces the older
                   ISA slot. See PCI SIG site.

PCI Express        PCI Express is a faster replacement for PCI and AGP slots.

PCI-X              A faster variant of the PCI Express bus replacement.

PCMCIA             Personal Computer Memory Card International Association.
                   Standard for 'Smart Cards' such as memory or RAM Disk, Network,
                   Hard Disks, CDROM etc. cards that can be fitted on the left 
                   side slot of Laptops. See PCMCIA Web Site.

PCX                ZSoft's Paintbrush picture format used on PCs mainly.

PDA                Personal Digital Assistant. Small portable computer for 
                   data access on the move e.g. Psion, WinCE etc.
									 
PDF                Portable Document Format. Page description format but simpler
                   than postscript.


Pentium            Intel x86 processor. Models include standard Pentium, Pentium
                   MMX, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, III and IV, Pentium M(obile).

Perl               A scripting programming language used commonly on web sites.
                   See Perl Home Page.
									 
PGA                Portable Graphics Adapter. Graphics used on Laptops and flat
                   screens.

PGP                Pretty Good Privacy. An encryption method of hiding data sent
                   over a network.

Pharming           When frausters redirect users to fake imitations of web sites
                   to gain private information such as usernames, passwords, account
                   details etc such as Banks, eBay, Paypal etc

Phishing           This is fraudant use of personal information for personal gain
                   such as emails send to get userids, passwords and PINS.
                   See Anti-Phishing site.

PHP                PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. Another scripting language similar to Perl.

Ping               Utility to see whether a another computer on TCP/IP network
                   is responding and returns the time taken for packet to get
                   there and back.
                   								 
Pixel              Picture element. A single dot on the screen.

Playstation        A game console developed by Sony Electronics. 

PLIP               Parallel Line Interface Protocol. Network communication between
                   computers using parallel port.

Plug-In            An extra bit of software to enhance existing software, for example,
                   Flash, Shockwave and Quicktime are plug ins for Web Browsers for
                   video and animation over the web.
                   
PM                 Power Management. Hardware features used to save power and
                   electricity when a PC is idle.
									 
PNG                Portable Network Graphics. Replacement file format for GIF as
                   GIF has licensing restrictions from CompuServe while PNG doesn't.

PNP                Plug aNd Play. Introduced with Windows 95 to simplify and
                   automate detection and installation of devices on a PC.

Pocket PC          Personal Organiser which uses a compact version of Windows
                   called PocketPC or Windows CE.
				   									 
Pointer            An arrow or other pointing image controlled by the Mouse.

Policy             A setting that is usually enforced on a computer system. 
                   See Group Policy.

Polymorphism       Ability for each class to have its own function in a hierarchy
                   that does a similar but not exact job as other functions in
                   other classes. Requires abstract classes and virtual functions.

POST               Power On Self Test. The process in which a computer does a
                   self-diagnosis on startup.
									 
Postscript         Page description language used extensively in Destop Publishing
                   and high end printers.

POWER              IBM's Power processor used by its servers. Run AIX, IBM i, Linux.

PowerPC            IBM's desktop processor used by early Apple Macintosh, now used
                   by A-EON Amiga computers running Amiga OS 4.1.

PowerPacker        Compression method used on pictures or text or even programs
                   which allows realtime decompression when opened.

PowerPoint         A media slideshow program, which is part of Microsoft Office.

PowerShell         A command shell by Microsoft built on .NET Framework or .NET Core APIs.

POP3               Post Office Protocol v3. Protocol used to send/receive 
                   Electronic mail.

PPM                Pages Per Minute. Number of pages of output per minute.

PPP                Point to Point Protocol. A protocol used for communication
                   between locations for Dial Up networking.

PPPoA              Point to Point Protocol over ATM. Common protocol used by UK ADSL
                   providers.

PPPoE              Point to Point Protocol over Ethernet. Common protocol used by US
                   ADSL providers.

PPTP               Point to Point Tunneling Protocol for VPN networking. 

Preferences        A program or option to change user, application or system settings.

Printer            Output device which produces a paper copy of whatever is on the
                   computer screen for example, text or pictures.

Program            Another name for a computer application or app.

Programming        Creation of computer software using a programming language.

Protocol           A standard using in networking for sending data between people.
                   Standards include: IPX, TCP/IP, SMTP, POP3 etc.

Proxy              A Proxy server is used to mainly to cache web pages and files
                   locally and gateway to internet. Example is Squid.

PS/2               Personal System 2. Name for range of IBM PCs. Also name for 
                   small 5 pin keyboard/mouse ports on most PCs.
								
PS2                Sony's Playstation 2 game console which includes the 128 bit Emotion 
                   Engine processor and a DVD player.

PS3                Sony's Playstation 3 game console which includes the Cell Broadband             
                   Engine, NVidea RSX, Blu-ray optical drive and SATA Hard disk and
                   supports Net Play.

PS4                Sony's Playstation 4 game console, which includes an AMD APU, 8 GB  RAM,
                   Blu-Ray drive, 500GB HDD,  WiFi, Ethernet, Bluetooth and USB ports
                   
PSD                Photoshop file format. Adobe Photoshop is the top end graphics
                   and paint package.

Psion              A Company that developed personal organizer devices like the Psion Organiser.

PSU                Power Supply Unit. Usually a transformer which converts mains
                   electricity to lower voltages for use with computer equipment.

PUP                Potentially Unwanted Program such as adware, spyware etc.

PWS                Personal Web Server. Cut down web server to host HTML pages
                   on your desktop PC. Comes with Windows 98, Me or NT4.

Python             A scripting language commonly used on web pages, see
                   Python Home Page.