What is a ROM and what does rooted and unrooted mean?

[albrst]

Maybe this goes elsewhere, like the forum for dummies but I have no clue what these terms mean. Can someone explain?

 

[Abe21599]

link 2 in my sig will explain it

 

[DF Smod]

Unrooted is a stock out of the box device, Rooted means you have full control over your device (you can make it do things the manufacturer didn't want it to do). A few examples would be wireless tethering, taking "screenshots" adding themes, and flashing ROM's

A ROM is basically someone else's (A DEV...or developer's) interpretation of the Android O/S...these days most ROM's are built from Source (the ground up) and can include a lot of things the Original O/S didn't include, Custom Kernels (make your CPU run faster) Custom Scripts (make tweaking your device easier) Custom Boot Animations...and an overall better Android Experience