Information Technology

The three fundamental characteristics of computers

• Speed: Computers provide the processing speed essential to our fast-paced society.
• Reliability: Computers are extremely reliable.
• Storage capability: Computer system can store tremendous amounts of data, which can be located and retrieved efficiently.

The areas of society in which computers are used

• Graphics: Business people make bar graphs and pie charts from tedious figures to convey information with far more impact than numbers alone convey. Architects use computer animated graphics to experiment with possible exteriors and to give clients a visual walk-through of proposed buildings.
• Education: Learning by doing – an approach uniquely suited to the computer.
• Retailing: Products from meats to magazines are packages with bar codes that can be read by computer scanners at supermarket checkout stand to determine prices and help manage inventory.
• Energy: Energy companies use computers to locate oil, coal, natural gas, and uranium.
• Law enforcement: Recent innovations in computer in computerized law enforcement include national fingerprints files.
• Transportation: computers are used in cars to monitor fluid levels, temperature, and electrical systems.
• Money: Computers speed up record keeping and allow banks to offer same-day services and even do-it-yourself banking over the phone.
• Agriculture: Farmers use small computers to help with billing, crop information and market price checks.
• Government: Federal government uses computes to forecast weather, to manage parks, to process immigrants, to produce Social Security benefits checks and collect taxes.
• Home: Personal computers are being used at home to keep records, write letters, prepare budgets, draw pictures, publish newsletters and connect with others.
• Health and medicine: Physicians can also use computers to assist in diagnoses.

• Robotics: Computers have paved the way for robots to take over many of the jobs that are too dangerous for humans.

Computer is divided into:

Hardware – the general term describing all electronic and mechanical elements of the computer, together with those devices use with the computer.
Software – the general term describing all the various programs that may be used on a computer system together with their associated documentation.

The basic components of a computer system: input, processing, output, and storage

A computer is a machine that can be programmed to accept data (input), process it into useful information (output), and store it way (in a secondary storage device) for safekeeping.
Input device: accept data or commands in a form that the computer can use; they send the data or commands to the processing unit.
Processor: known as the central processing unit (CPU), has electronic circuitry that manipulates input data into the information people want and actually executes computer instructions.
Output device: show people the processed data a usable form.
Storage: it stores data and programs outside the computer itself.

Explain the various classifications of computers

Supercomputers: the largest, fastest and most expensive and they can process trillions of instructions per second. They are used in mainstream activities.
Mainframes: they are the large computers that capable of processing data at very high speed. They have hundreds, or even thousand, of users connected to it that may be spread nationally or internationally. They operate for 24 hours a day.
Mini computer: a middle range computer, similar to a mainframe, but smaller, with not so many users. They are useful for high volume processing and interaction with multiple users on several jobs at once.
Personal computer: is a computer used by one person at a time. Often PCs are connected together on a network to enable users to share resources.

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