• All computer components are either hardware or software
• hardware is the physical part (keyboard, mouse, etc.)
• Sofware is the logical part (programming instructions,CD ROM disks and USB flash drives.)

• Hardware components ouside the system unit
• mouse
• keyboard
• printer
• monitor
• scanner

• A bit is a single circuit in the computer system that is switched on or off.
• 8 bits equals a byte and these 8 bits strung together in a specific order form codes.

an international accepted code for representing characters in the computer

• defiens 128 alphabetic, numeric, and symbol characters.
• stands for american standard code for information interchange

A byte tnslates into a letter or action

Ex: the letter A is____

01000001

0 is off and 1 is on

The most comon storage measurement for comutersis the byte

Random Access Memory

• there are various types of RAM
• the more you have the mroe programs your comuter can run at the same time

• memory keys for portable storage of data
• you plug into your USB port

Central Processing Unit

• provides brainpower for PC
• Executes commands
• Performs calculations
• Plugs into motherboard
• CPU's speed and capabilities is greatest factor for overall speed and power of system

• referred to as dual core - two brains and quad core
• microprocessor
• central processing unit
• the brain
• most important piece of hardware controlling the speed of your computer

• Largest circuit board in a PC
• contains millions of electronic circuit elements on chips of silicon
• has expansions slots (bus) that permits installation of other components

GHz

• Computer speed
• speed of computer is measured in gigahertz
• a hertz is a single oscillation (up and down movement) of an electromagnetic wave
• giga means billions so many computers move at speeds of several billion waves a second.

• determines how fast the video controller redraws the display on the monitor
• measured in hertz

• Modular circuit boards that plug in the computer to add new features and capabilities
• Ex: card to connect a scanner or video camera
• Network or Land Card - for connection to the Local Area Network
• TV - card to allow you to display a television picture through your screen

• Expansion cards just discussed plug into expansion slots located on the motheboard
• Sometimes you can run out of slots and can no longer add extra features

• A port is a place to plug in a cable or a peripheral device, such as:
• PS/2 ports - mouse and keyboard
• USB port - for scanners, keyboards, cameras, monitors - Univeral Serial Bus
• Phone jack

Software is broken into basically the following:

- operating systems

- application sofware

- Data

• Necessary for the hardware to talk to application software and access data - it is like a traffic cop.
• Runsyour file management system - My computer and Windows Explorer
• Examples: Windows XP, Windows vista, linux, macintos system OS X (tiger) or OS X (leopard)

• Microsoft word
• microsoft excel
• navigator
• adobe photoshop
• java programs for web design

.doc

.xls

.jpeg

A complete pathname consists of:

• the drive the file is located on
• the folders and subfolders where the file is located and
• the filename as well as the extension indicating the type of application the created the file.

what you see is what you get

(on your screen, is what you'll get on your printer)

The birth of desktop publishing

PC - personal computer

Supercomputer - the fastest problem solvers avilable. Used by science, higher mathematics, military and industrial research.

Computers used by large companies to manage huge amounts of data (Ex: telephone companies, banks, etc.)

• must be able to handle large databases, process rapidly, and print quickly
• hundreds of users
• PC's work with billions of bytes of data
• Mainframes work with trillions of bytes

smaller processing and storage capacity tham mainframes but larger than PC's

- several linked together via network can be as powerful as mainframe

Local Area Network

•  share files and messages with other computer on network

• "Nanotechnology has given is the tools... to play with the ultimate toy box of nature-atoms and molecules. Everything is made from it... the possibilities to create new things appear limitless."
• Nanotechnology is, broadly speaking, the art and science of manipulating and  rearranging individual atoms and melecules to create useful materials, devices, and systems

center for responsible nanotechnology

- nanotechnology is the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale.

Sputnik.

- first artificial earth satellite

ARPA (advanced research projects agency)

Name that Guy.

Created the world wide web in the early 1990's by the European Laboratory for Particle Physics

• E-mail - first killer application for the Internet
• Invention of the WWW - every documanet has an address - URL
• Browser - Everyday people could use a GUI(graphical user interface) to navigate the Web
• Allowing commerce on the Internet - prior to that law - only used for research. After businesses and customers could interact.

• Wrote the first popular applications for the personal computer
• Bought and modified an operating system to be used for the IBM PC.
• Eventually this made microsoft's founders very rich