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Castle
Community Office:
Basic IT Course
PC
Buyer's Guide
Jan-Feb 2012
Desktop PC and Laptop technology is always improving.
What you buy
today will work fine for years providing you look after
it.
At the moment, you can buy an adequate PC, Monitor,
Keyboard and Mouse for £300 to £450. Laptops are just as
reliable at about
the same price.
Hard Drive 240 – 500
Gigabytes (GB)
-
this is the main storage area on a PC or Laptop
where you store your programs like AVG (virus protection)
your camera software and your photo's.
Photo's can be up to 5 or 6 Megabytes (MB), 1 Gigabyte
is 1024 Megabytes roughly, so that's about 205 high
quality pictures
per Gigabyte.
As a beginner you will be fine with a
240 GB Hard
Drive but a larger
drive will prevent any storage problems in a year or
two.
Random Access Memory
(RAM) 3 – 4
Gigabytes - this is temporary storage space - the
computer collects the information it needs every time
you open a program, if it is going to need it again soon
it stores it in the RAM, this saves time locating the
original information over and over again. The more RAM
you have the better (faster) your computer will perform.
A basic user will need 3 GB of RAM, but 4 or 6 is a
better investment.
USB Ports - These are
ports that you connect various things like memory sticks printers etc.. Three USB Ports are
essential. 4 or 6 would be better.
Processor - Dual
Core Intel Pentium 3.20 Ghz or above.
The Processor is
the engine of the computer. There are 2 main manufacturers on the market. Intel which has the best
reputation, and there is AMD which is cheaper and
considered almost as good as Intel. Lesser known
processors Athlon,
Duron and Sempron are considered as adequate.
Wireless Network -
Should be included as standard, this is what you use to
connect to most routers (BT Homehub, Orange Livebox
etc). This is a standard but check that the PC/Laptop
you want to buy has 802.11g wireless capability
included.
The BT or Orange connection to the Internet is
of course an extra expense.
Ethernet Connection -
This is the wired network connection as opposed to the
wireless, most computers will have this ability, it's
very useful so make sure the one you want to buy has it.
Burner - This is
what you would use to create CD's or DVD's. Most PC's or
Laptops will have this as standard, though check before
buying.
Computer Jargon Buster
The
term desktop computer originated when the computer case
was wide and flat, designed specifically, to fit on your
desktop with the monitor on top. The flat case evolved
into the tower case which runs cooler. Sixty percent of
the tower, below, is empty space to allow heat
dispersal. Laptop's components have to be made to work
with very little airspace, this is partly why Laptops
remain as expensive they are. Notepads/Notebooks have limited
ability and remain overpriced for what they do.
Desktop
Tower Laptop
Notepad
Computers consist of hardware and software
Hardware
is any part of your computer that has a physical structure, such as the
monitor, mouse or keyboard. If you can touch it, it is hardware.
Software
is any set of coded instructions (a program) that
tells the hardware what to do.
The program that provides a consistent way for other programs to work on
many different makes of computer is called the Operating System. The
Operating System is the core software component of your computer.
The
Windows 7 Operating System usually
comes installed on the Hard Drive ready to use on new computers.
Or
it can be
copied to your computer Hard Drive from a Digital
Video Disc (DVD).
The Operating System is
in charge of the computer. It is responsible for managing all the
computer's hardware and software
resources.
The
Operating System
makes
sure all the various parts of the
computer get what they need. "Booting up" or "re-booting" your
computer, is the process that occurs
when you turn your computer on. The
process has been likened to lacing up
your hiking boots. You are not going
anywhere until you have your boots on -
hence the term "Booting-up".
At the end
of the booting-up process, the Operating
System loads and begins to do its job of
controlling the way in which the
computer functions.
You may be working on your
wordprocesser, sending an email, and
have your Internet browser open for web
surfing, all at the same time. These
three programs need attention from the
central processing unit (CPU) to do
whatever task that you, the user, are
telling them to do.
All the programs you chose to run at the
same time need memory and storage space. They
also need to be able to send your
commands to devices such as the DVD
player, the scanner and the
printer. The
Operating System is responsible for
handling all these essential tasks, as
well as handling the processor and
network management.
_____________________
The Hard Drive
Nearly every desktop computer and server
in use today contains one or more
hard-disk drives like the one on the
right.
Hard drives do one thing well -
they store changing digital information
in a relatively permanent form.
Hard drives
give computers the ability to remember
millions of things when the power is turned off. A hard
drive stores all your files and
information in a permanent form unlike
storing it in Random Access Memory (RAM which is temporary).
The larger your hard drive the more information and files
you will be able to store. Today's average hard drive is 100 GB.
A
100 GB Laptop hard drive holds just as much
information despite being half the
physical size and weight of desktop hard
drives.
_____________________
 The Central Processer Unit -
CPU.
The CPU, or processor, is the heart of your computer no
matter what type (PC, Server, or Laptop). The CPU processes
everything that your
Operating System asks the
computer to do.
There are many brands for processors such as Intel and
Athlon. The better the processor, the faster the computer.
__________________
More on
the Operating System
The
operating system performs
many functions using what is referred to
as "drivers". When you install a new
printer your system may ask you to
install more software called a driver.
What does
a driver do? A driver
is a specially written program which
understands the operation of the
specific device it interfaces to, such
as a mouse, a keyboard, a printer, video card or sound card.
The diagram illustrates a few typical
interfaces between the operating system
and components from many different
manufacturers.
The operating system has
several other functions including:
A set of libraries or functions which programs may
need to perform specific tasks with
specific
components.
System tools (programs) used to monitor
computer performance, debug problems, or
maintain parts of the system.
Operating
systems are written to allow you to add a
new security update or even an entirely new
operating system rather than junk your
computer and buy a brand
new one when you need to make a change.
Operating Systems:
XP versus Vista
Released in
October 2001 Microsoft Windows XP had 35
million lines of code. Since then it has grown to over 40
million.
Microsoft Windows Vista, released in January 2007, has over
50 million lines of code.
The much vaunted Vista “software boost” had the perverse effect of
slowing everything down. Especially when Vista is running on
anything but the latest and fastest hardware. Even then XP
outperforms Vista in the bussiness enviroment. As of February 2010; there are over 1.1 billion
Personnel Computers (PC's) in use worldwide. A staggering 70% of
them were running on XP. That means almost 800 million
computers - which makes XP the most widely installed
operating system of all time.
XP continues to thrive due to the growing market for
Notepads. Unlike their big brother, the Laptop, Notepads
do not have the resources to use Vista.
The jury is still out on
Windows 7 - released last October - which has been called "Vista cleaned-up".
_____________________________
Computer Jargon Buster
____________________________
Upgrades
You need only a little knowledge of hardware to improve
your computer with a new Hard Drive or more Random
Access Memory (RAM). There
are some very good step by step guides to upgrading your
computer on YouTube but we always recommend
you seek our advice – which is free - before getting
busy with screwdriver.
The power supply is usually a small metal box in the top
corner of a case (tower). You can find out how the
power supply works at
howstuffworks.com
(external link).
The Important thing to remember is to
SWITCH-OFF and
UNPLUG the power supply before removing the panels to
work inside your computer.
Inside a tower computer
___________________________________
The Motherboard
The motherboard, below, contains various circuit cards
performing various functions; all plug into many similar
sockets on a common circuit board. Each circuit card
performs a unique function in the computer and gets its
power from the socket.
Outlined on the
motherboard below are the sockets that house the Central
Processer Unit, (CPU) the Random Access Memory (RAM) and
the access or expansion slots.
No 1
shows the access slots for add-ons.
No 2 The CPU or
processor slot.
No.3 The slots to hold
random access memory (RAM).
1. Access Slots
2. Processor (CPU)
3. Random Access Memory (RAM) Slots.
Access or expansion slots are openings in a computer where a
circuit board can be inserted to add new capabilities to the
computer. Add-on’s such as networking cards, video adapters,
sound cards to improve your computers performance are
surprisingly easy to install.
_____________________
RAM. Random Access Memory 
Random Access Memory (RAM),
two samples on the right, speeds things up.
When an application, like a word processor, is running it
stores information in the RAM.
When you close the
application the information is deleted from the RAM.
The more RAM you have the faster your computer will be, and
the more applications you'll be able to run without loosing
speed.
_____________________
More on Ram.
Random Access Memory (RAM) is a part
of main memory.
RAM is called main memory because we can
randomly and quickly access any location
in memory.
It is used to store
(1) instructions waiting to be obeyed,
(2) instructions currently being obeyed,
(3) data awaiting processing,
(4) data currently
being processed, and
(5) data awaiting
output.
RAM are of two types: DRAM & SRAM
DRAM stands for Dynamic RAM. It is the
type of memory in a modern computer. It
is dense, very small, and it is very
inexpensive, which makes it affordable
for large amount of memory. The memory
cells in a DRAM chip are tiny capacitors
that retain a charge to indicate a bit.
The problem with DRAM is it is dynamic,
and because of the design it must be
constantly refreshed or the electrical
charges in the individual memory
capacitors will drain and the data will
be lost. SRAM stands for Static RAM.
It does not need the periodic refresh
rate like DRAM. It is also much faster
than DRAM and is fully able to keep pace
with modern processor. However SRAM is
both expensive and physically larger.
Computer
Tutorials
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/howstuffworks/23-computer-tour-video.htm
QWERTY
Keyboard: Origins
Back in 1875, people used
typewriters with keyboards laid out in ABC order. Because folks typed so
quickly, jamming was a common problem. Mr. Christopher Sholes couldn’t
improve the mechanical aspects of the typewriter, so he did the
next best thing to get people to slow down. His solution was to arrange the
letters in such a way so that the type bars wouldn’t get crossed up. It
worked.
Over time
Sholes
QWERTY
layout became the standard. Inventors have since introduced alternatives,
but nothing has caught on with the mainstream. One of the best known is the
Dvorak Layout. HowStuffWorks breaks down the
pros and cons.
_____________________
Faster still and Faster
June 2009.
Fujitsu announced the new
SPARC64 VIIIfx - codenamed Venus - for
supercomputers. The 8-core SPARC64
VIIIfx offers a processing power of 128 gigaflop.
1 gigaflop = 1 billion
floating point operations per second.
A
floating-point operation is any
mathematical operation (such as +, -, *,
/) or assignment that involves
floating-point numbers (as opposed to
binary integer operations).
Floating-point numbers have decimal
points in them, i.e. 2.0 is a
floating-point number because it has a
decimal in it.
The number 2 (without a decimal point)
is a binary integer.
Floating-point
operations typically take longer to
execute than simple binary integer
operations. For this reason, most
embedded applications avoid wide-spread
usage of floating-point math in favour
of faster, smaller integer operations.
Five Reasons Why
Vista Failed
1. Apple
successfully demonized Vista
Apple’s clever I’m a Mac ads have successfully driven home
the perception that Windows Vista is buggy, boring, and
difficult to use. After taking two years of merciless
pummeling from Apple, Microsoft recently responded with it’s
I’m a PC campaign in order to defend the honor of Windows.
This will likely restore some mojo to the PC and Windows
brands overall, but it’s too late to save Vista’s perception
as a dud.
2. Windows XP is too entrenched
In 2001, when Windows XP was released, there were about 600
million computers in use worldwide. Over 80% of them were
running Windows but it was split between two code bases:
Windows 95/98 (65%) and Windows NT/2000 (26%), according to
IDC. One of the big goals of Windows XP was to unite the
Windows 9x and Windows NT code bases, and it eventually
accomplished that.
In 2008, there were over 1.1 billion PCs in use worldwide
and over 70% of them were running Windows XP. That means
almost 800 million computers are running XP, which makes it
the most widely installed operating system of all time.
That’s a lot of inertia to overcome, especially for IT
departments that have consolidated their deployments and
applications around Windows XP.
And, believe it or not, Windows XP could actually increase
its market share over the next couple years. How? Low-cost
netbooks and nettops are going to be flooding the market.
While these inexpensive machines are powerful enough to
provide a solid Internet experience for most users,
they don’t have enough resources to run Windows Vista,
so they all run either Windows XP or Linux. Intel
expects this market to explode in the years ahead. (For more
on netbooks and nettops, see the fact sheet and this
presentation both are PDFs from Intel.)
3. Vista is too slow
For years Microsoft has been criticized by developers and IT
professionals for “software bloat” adding so many changes
and features to its programs that the code gets huge and
unwieldy. However, this never seemed to have enough of an
effect to impact software sales. With Windows Vista,
software bloat appears to have finally caught up with
Microsoft.
XP had 35 million lines of code when it was released, and
since then it has grown to about 40 million. Vista has over
50 Million lines of code. The extra code lines in Vista
proved a disaster. This "software bloat" has had the effect
of slowing down Vista, especially when it’s running on
anything but the latest and fastest hardware. Even then, the
latest version of Windows XP soundly outperforms Microsoft
Vista.
4. There wasn’t supposed to be a Vista
It’s easy to forget that when Microsoft launched Windows XP
it was actually trying to change its OS business model to
move away from shrink-wrapped software and convert customers
to software subscribers. That’s why it abandoned the naming
convention of Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows 2000, and
instead chose Windows XP. The XP stood for “experience” and
was part of Microsoft’s .NET Web services strategy at the
time. The master plan was to get users and businesses to pay
a yearly subscription fee for the Windows experience XP
would essentially be the on-going product name but would
include all software upgrades and updates, as long as you
paid for your subscription. Of course, it would disable
Windows on your PC if you didn’t pay. That’s why product
activation was coupled with Windows XP.
Microsoft released Windows XP and Office XP simultaneously
in 2001 and both included product activation and the plan to
eventually migrate to subscription products. However, by the
end of 2001 Microsoft had already abandoned the subscription
concept with Office, and quickly returned to the
shrink-wrapped business model and the old product
development model with both products.
The idea of doing incremental releases and upgrades of its
software rather than a major shrink-wrapped release every
3-5 years was a good concept. Microsoft just couldn’t figure
out how to make the business model work, but instead of
figuring out how to get it right, it took the easy route and
went back to an old model that was simply not very well
suited to the economic and technical realities of today’s IT
world.
5. Vista broke too much stuff
One of the big reasons that Windows XP caught on was because
it had the hardware, software, and driver compatibility of
the Windows 9x line plus the stability and industrial
strength of the Windows NT line. The compatibility issue was
huge. Having a single, highly-compatible Windows platform
simplified the computing experience for users, IT
departments, and software and hardware vendors.
Microsoft either forgot or disregarded that fact when it
released Windows Vista, because, despite a long beta period,
a lot of existing software and hardware were not compatible
with Vista when it was released in January 2007. Since many
important programs and peripherals were unusable in Vista,
that made it impossible for a lot of IT departments to adopt
it. Many of the incompatibilities were the result of tighter
security.
After Windows was targeted by a nasty string of viruses,
worms, and malware in the early 2000s, Microsoft embarked on
the Trustworthy Computing initiative to make its products
more secure. One of the results was Windows XP Service Pack
2 (SP2), which won over IT and paved the way for XP to
become the world’s mostly widely deployed OS.
The other big piece of Trustworthy Computing was the
even-further-locked-down version of Windows that Microsoft
released in Vista. This was definitely the most secure OS
that Microsoft had ever released but the price was
user-hostile features such as UAC, a far more complicated
set of security prompts that accompanied many basic tasks,
and a host of software incompatibility issues. In order
words, Vista broke a lot of the things that users were used
to doing in XP.
Bottom line
There are some who argue that Vista is actually more widely
adopted than XP was at this stage after its release, and
that it’s highly likely that Vista will eventually replace
XP in the enterprise. We don’t agree. With XP, there were
clear motivations to migrate: bring Windows 9x machines to a
more stable and secure OS and bring Windows NT/2000 machines
to an OS with much better hardware and software
compatibility. And, you also had the advantage of
consolidating all of those machines on a single OS in order
to simplify support.
With Vista, there are simply no major incentives for IT to
use it over XP. Security isn’t even that big of an issue
because XP SP2 (and above) are solid and most IT departments
have it locked down quite well. As I wrote in the article
Prediction: Microsoft will leapfrog Vista, release Windows 7
early, and change its OS business, Microsoft needs to
abandon the strategy of releasing a new OS every 3-5 years
and simply stick with a single version of Windows and
release updates, patches, and new features on a regular
basis. Most IT departments are essentially already on a
subscription model with Microsoft so the business strategy
is already in place there.
As far as the subscription model goes for small businesses
and consumers, instead of disabling Windows on a user’s PC
if they don’t renew their subscription, just don’t allow
that machine to get any more updates if they don’t renew.
Microsoft could
also work with OEMs to sell something like a three-year
subscription to Windows with every new PC. Then users would
have the choice of renewing on their own after that.
Computer
Tutorials
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/howstuffworks/23-computer-tour-video.htm
Castle
Community Office, 9 Market Vaults,
St Helen's Square, Scarborough YO11 1EU
E-mail:
castlecommunityoffice@btinternet.com
Telephone: Christine 07724 311750
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