A "Pointer Machine" is many things. Authors who consider referring to this term are invited to read the following note first. 1 Introduction In a 1992 paper by Galil and the author we referred to a "pointer machine " model of computation. A subsequent survey of related literature has produced over twenty references to papers having to do with "pointer machines", naturally containing a large number of cross-references. These papers address a range of subjects that range from the model considered in the above paper to some other ones which are barely comparable. The fact that such different notions have been discussed under the heading of "pointer machines" has produced the regrettable effect that cross references are sometimes found to be misleading. Clearly, it is easy for a reader who does not follow a paper carefully to misinterpret its claims when a term that is so ill-defined is used. This note is an attempt to rectify the situation. We start with a survey of the different notions...