The basic components of a personal computer are more or less the same today as they were in the 1990s. Well, perhaps "less" rather than "more." Parts still perform the same overall functions as they once did. The motherboard still serves as the computer's central hub, with everything connecting to it; the processor still follows instructions; But that's only one thing that makes computers faster and better. For example, the magnetic storage of hard drive disks has increased tremendously since the 1990s. We measure drives in terabytes when we used to measure them in megabytes. New interfaces for transmitting data also make a big difference. The Parallel ATA systems topped out at a speed of 133 MB per second, while Serial ATA, or SATA, currently supports up to 6 gigabits per second (768 megabytes).