Types of computers
10. The All-Powerful Personal Computer
● computer designed for general use by a single person
● touchscreens, all sorts of built-in connectivity, and operating systems
9. Desktop
● design to be set up in a permanent location
● equipped with large CRT
● it houses the physical hardware that makes a computer run and connects to input
devices such as the monitor, keyboard and mouse
8. Laptop
● portable computers that integrate the display, keyboard, a pointing device or
trackball, processor, memory and hard drive all in a battery-operated package
7. Netbooks and Tablets
● ultra-portable computers
● netbooks' internal components are less powerful than those in regular laptops
● small display and little storage capacity
● don't have the internal fans that PCs have
6. Handheld Computers
● smartphones and PDAs
● use flash memory instead of a hard drive, touchscreen technology
● high-speed processors, many gigabytes of memory, complete connectivity options,
dual-lens cameras, high-quality audio systems
5. Workstation
● desktop computer that has a more powerful processor, additional memory, high-end
graphics adapters and enhanced capabilities
● redundant hard drives for data safety, faster CPUs and large-capacity solid-state
drives
4. Server
● powerful processors, lots of memory and large hard drives
● provides computer power through a local area network or over the internet
● have typical computer components but don't typically have dedicated displays
3. Mainframe
● huge computers that can fill an entire room or even a whole floor
● help to secure countless sensitive transactions
2. Supercomputer
● composed of multiple high performance computers working in parallel as a single
system
● built for breakneck processing speed
1. Wearable
● common computer applications are integrated into watches, cell phones, visors and
even clothing
Units for measurement
1000 bytes 1 kilobyte
1000 kilobytes 1 megabyte
1000 megabytes 1 gigabyte
1000 gigabytes 1 terabytes
1000 terabytes 1 petabyte
Software licenses
A software license is a document that provides legally binding guidelines for the use and
distribution of software.
Types of software licenses
● Public domain. This software is freely available. Anyone can use and change it or
incorporate code from this software into an application.
● Free and open source software licenses are often referred to as open source. FOSS
source code is available to the customer along with the software product. The
customer is usually allowed to use the source code to change the software.
● Copyleft. Licensed code may be distributed or modified as part of a software
application or project if all code involved is distributed under the same license. New
products containing old code with a copyleft license must comply with the restrictions
laid out in the old code's license.
● Proprietary. Proprietary software licenses make it illegal to copy, modify or distribute
the software. These licenses provide the software owners with the most protection
from unauthorized use of the software.
Computer: device or machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic
or logical operations automatically.
Software: a collection of instructions which provides instructions and data to execute
commands.
The major types of computer software are system software, applications and programming
languages.
Hardware: tangible aspects of a computing device.
Input device: peripheral device that accepts data and feeds it into a computer.
● keyboard
● microphone
● scanner
● mouse
● joystick
● webcam
Output device: any hardware device used to send data from a computer to another device
or user.
● printer
● screen (if touchscreen, it’s also an input device)
● projector
Storage device: a piece of computer equipment on which information can be stored.
● hard disk
● solid state disk
● pen drive
● chip
● CD/DVD/BLU RAY
RAM (Random Access Memory): hardware in a computing device where the operating
system, application programs and data are kept so they can be quickly reached by the
device's processor. RAM is the main memory in a computer.
ROM (Read-only memory): computer storage containing non-volatile, permanent data that
can only be read. ROM contains the programming that allows a computer to start up or
regenerate each time it is turned on.
Operating System: interface between a computer user and computer hardware. An
operating system is a software which performs all the basic tasks
● controls the backing store and peripherals such as scanners and printers
● deals with the transfer of programs in and out of memory
● organizes the use of memory between programs
● organizes processing time between programs and users
● maintains security and access rights of users
● deals with errors and user instructions
● allows the user to save files to a backing store
● provides the interface between the user and the computer - for example, Windows 10
and Apple OSX
● issues simple error messages
