28-04-2009
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| Member | | Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 118
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| The top 10 confusing terms of gadget
Cookie, Digital TV, Ethernet and PC Suite are some of the terms that baffle Britain's public, a new survey has revealed.
Dongle, widely used to refer to a broadband wireless adaptor, was voted the most confusing word.
The move, backed by the Plain English Campaign, had surveyed more than 5,000 users, with the aim of knocking out the "walls of techno-babble".
Peter Griffiths, campaign secretary for the Plain English Campaign, offered possible ways to make the gadget jargon more comprehensible.
"We need to pull our head out of the digital clouds and use plain English. If changing the name isn't an option then a glossary of terms would work," the BBC quoted him as saying.
Alex Watson, editor of Custom PC magazine, explained that a reason contributing towards the complexity was that many companies tagged different names on similar products, adding to the confusion.
He said: "Some names are just made up for marketing purposes, while others are chosen so users can relate to the term.
"One way of linking peripherals to a Mac was via an interface called FireWire. On a Sony it is called i.LINK and it's also called Lynx by Texas Instruments, even though all three are exactly the same thing. That hardly makes things easy for the consumer."  |
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