BASIC SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE INFORMATION

HARDWARE:
Hardware represents the physical and tangible components of a computer i.e. the components that can be seen and touched.
Examples of Hardware are following:

Input devices:

An input device is any hardware device that sends data to a computer, allowing you to interact with and control the computer. The picture shows a Logitech trackball mouse, an example of an input device. The most commonly used or primary input devices on a computer are the keyboard and mouse. Other examples of input device are:

• Audio conversion device
• Barcode reader
• Biometrics (e.g. fingerprint scanner)
• Business Card Reader
• Digital camera and Digital Camcorder
• Electroencephalography (EEG)
• Finger (with touchscreen or Windows Touch)
• Gamepad, Joystick, Paddle, Steering wheel, and Microsoft Kinect
• Gesture recognition
• Graphics tablet

 

Keyboard

mouse

Output devices:

An output device is any peripheral that receives data from a computer, usually for display, projection, or physical reproduction. For example, the image shows an inkjet printer, an output device that can make a hard copy of any information shown on your monitor. Another example of an output device is a computer monitor, which displays an image that is received from the computer. Monitors and printers are two of the most common output devices used with a computer.

Other Example of Output Devices are:

•     3D Printer
•     Braille embosser
•     Braille reader
•     Flat panel
•     GPS
•     Headphones
•     Computer Output Microfilm (COM)
•     Monitor
•     Plotter
•     Printer (Dot matrix printer, Inkjet printer, and Laser printer)
•     Projector
•     Sound card
•     Speakers
•     Speech-generating device (SGD)
•     TV
•     Video card

Monitor

Secondary storage devices:

Alternatively referred to as external memory, secondary memory, and auxiliary storage, a secondary storage device is a non-volatile device that holds data until it is deleted or overwritten. Secondary storage is about two orders of magnitude cheaper than primary storage. Consequently, hard drives (a prime example of secondary storage) are the go-to solution for nearly all data kept on today's computers.

Examples of secondary storage

•     Hard drive
•     Solid-state drive
•     USB thumb drive
•     SD card
•     CD
•     DVD
•     Floppy diskette
•     Tape drive

Usb Thumb Drive

Internal components:

Internal is a term used to describe a device that is installed within the computer. For example, a video card is an internal device and a printer is an external device. When referring to a drive, an internal drive (e.g. internal hard drive) is any drive inside the computer. In the picture is an example of computer memory and an example of internal hardware. Below are additional examples of internal hardware in your computer.

Internal computer hardware devices

•     CPU
•     Drive (e.g. Blu-ray, CD-ROM, DVD, floppy drive, hard drive, and SSD)
•     Fan (heat sink)
•     Modem
•     Motherboard
•     Network card
•     RAM
•     Sound card
•     Video card

 

 

CPU

SOFTWARE

Software, simply are the computer programs. The instructions given to the computer in the form of a program is called Software. Software is the set of programs, which are used for different purposes. All the programs used in computer to perform specific task is called Software.

Types of software

1. System software:

a) Operating System Software

DOS, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Unix/Linux, MAC/OS X etc.

b) Utility Software

Windows Explorer (File/Folder Management), Windows Media Player, Anti-Virus Utilities, Disk Defragmentation, Disk Clean, BackUp, WinZip, WinRAR etc…

2. Application software:

a) Package Software

Ms. Office 2003, Ms. Office 2007, Macromedia (Dreamweaver, Flash, Freehand), Adobe (PageMaker, PhotoShop) 

b) Tailored or Custom Software

SAGE (Accounting), Galileo/Worldspan (Travel) etc.

3. Computer Languages & Scripting:

a) Low Level Language  
i) Machine Level Language  
ii) Assembly Language  
Machine language: These language instructions are directly executed by CPU  
Assembly language: The endeavor of giving machine language instructions a name structure that means bit strings of instructions of machine language are given name here  
High Level Language: The user friendly language ...more natural language than assembly language. Assembler is needed to convert assembly language into machine language Complier is needed to convert high level to machine language 

b) High Level Language

COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language), FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation), BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), C, C++ etc. are the examples of High Level Language.