Computers — and the community of people that surrounds them — do an excellent job of generating jargon. They've created a world of RJ-11 jacks, Lempel Ziv compression, TACACS protocols, and data forks. Microsoft Computer Dictionary, Fourth Edition, explains all these terms and thousands more. It's a sort of miniencyclopedia of computing topics.

The dictionary focuses on providing beginning and intermediate computer users with a solid grounding in terms, technologies, and concepts related to productivity software, databases, and networks. Communications technologies — such as those related to mobile phones — get attention too. This latest edition of the dictionary includes a selection of terms related to the Year 2000 bug, though these terms are inexplicably isolated in a special appendix.

The Microsoft Computer Dictionary generally treats non-Microsoft technologies evenhandedly — the entries related to Sun Microsystems' Java language might even be construed as boosterish. However, a Microsoft slant sometimes appears, as in the coverage of palm-size PCs. There's no mention of 3Com's topselling Palm computers or its operating systems, though Windows CE is mentioned.