Geek In Disguise

This phrase has been bothering me for a while now. I hear it quite a lot on a project I'm involved in and I'm too stubborn to ask what it means so had to go research it. My guess is few others know quite what it means but nod sagely when they hear it so here is the scoop - it actually means nothing in IT terms. Well, compared to it's real origin that is. As Peter Glaskowsky of C|Net confirms though, it does have a specific meaning in a machine shop:

In a machine shop, the phrase has a definite meaning: "speed" is the rate at which a tool cuts through the workpiece. "Feed" is the rate at which the tool is advanced into the workpiece, thereby determining the depth of the cut.

Meantime, in IT Peter comments:

In the computer industry, "speeds and feeds" has no particular meaning, but it's generally used as a blanket term for the features and performance of a microprocessor or a whole computer system. I think many of the people who use this phrase in the computer industry have no idea where it came from or what it means; I hope this blog post will help spread the word.

So there you have it, you can continue to nod wisely safe in the knowledge that you now have this knowledge. Thanks Peter!