Virtual

=**Virtual** : adjective=

Definition: 1. temporarily simulated or extended by computer software (Source: [|Dictionary.com])

There are many different meanings of the word virtual in computing and information technology. It is defined as a software system that acts as an actual hardware such as a virtual disk for online storage purposes.

Nowadays, technological innovation has made almost everything possible to be done virtually. Paying bills for instance. You can pay your car bills, utility bills, and such online and virtually to make everything easier and faster for everyone.

The term virtual also applies to gaming technologies. Virtual video games are now also continuously innovating and they are getting more and more virtual each day.

An example of something virtual that mostly everyone uses nowadays is the use of virtual drives. Virtual drives are drives that an operating system (Microsoft Vista, Mac OS X, Linux, etc.) use for storing computer files without having to have the actual hardware. There are many other uses for virtual drives. There is backup, enhancement, and security.

__Backup__ Disk images may be created to avoid wear-and-tear on a physical disk, such as CD or DVD, with the disk image mounted in a virtual drive when needed. Similarly, disk images can provide a backup copy of physical disks, in case the original is damaged, lost or stolen.

__Enhancement__ Using disk images in a virtual drive allows users to shift data between technologies, for example from CD optical drive to hard disk drive. This may provide advantages such as speed and noise (hard disk drives are typically four or five times faster than optical drives [[|LinuxHelp]], and also quieter). In addition it may reduce power consumption, since it may allow just one device (a hard disk) to be used instead of two (hard disk plus optical drive).

__Security__ Virtual hard disks are most commonly used in on the fly disk encryption ("[|OTFE]") software such as [|FreeOTFE] and [|TrueCrypt], where an encrypted "image" of a disk is stored on the PC. When you enter the disk's password, the disk image is "mounted", and made available as a new drive letter on your PC. Files written to this virtual drive are written to the encrypted image, and never stored in clear text.

[|Nintendo™] has recently released a game that a lot people bought because of its functionality. Nowadays, a lot of people would like to keep track of their diet without having to do all the hard work such as writing everything down in different exercise logs. That is why they have created Wii Fit™. Wii Fit™ enables people to exercise in their houses by doing it virtually. In this case, they use a medium, the hardware itself, to virtually keep track of their exercise logs such as calories gained and calories lost. Because of this, more and more people are being able to keep track of their diet without having to go through all the troubles of writing down everything they eat and their exercise logs.

**This shows an example of a virtual tour of a 767-400ER plane.** media type="custom" key="3682271" (Source: [|Boeing])