Hardware & SoftwareGeneral concepts of ICT systems

Objectives

Know what is meant by the terms ‘hardware’ and ‘software’

Understand the difference between systems software and applications software

Be able to define hardware, giving examples; define software, giving examples; describe the difference between

hardware and software

What is hardware?

Hardware is the physical parts of the computer system – the parts that you can touch and see.

A motherboard, a CPU, a keyboard and a monitor are all items of hardware.

An analogy…

Your hardware is all of the parts that make up your body: bones, muscles, skin, blood, etc.

Examples of external hardware

We will look at each of these in more detail in a future lesson.

Other examples include: • Scanner• Web cam• Camera• Fan

Examples of internal hardware

We will look at each of these in more detail in a future lesson.

Other examples include: • Graphics card• IDE ribbon• Power supply• Fan

Peripherals

A peripheral is any hardware device which connects to the computer and is controlled by the Central Processing Unit (CPU) -with the exception of memory.

When you are trying to think of examples of peripherals, think of things which plug into the back of the box.

Examples are: monitor keyboard mouse printer scanner speakers external hard drives

What is Software?

Software is a collection of instructions that can be ‘run’ on a computer. These instructions tell the computer what to do.

What is software?

To continue the analogy…

Your software is all of your thoughts and mental processes: these are the instructions that tell your physical body what to do

What is software?

Software is not a physical thing (but it can of course be stored on a physical medium such as a CD-ROM), it is just a bunch of codes.

An operating system such as Windows XP or Mac OS X, applications such as Microsoft Word, and the instructions that control a robot are all examples of software.

The Difference Between Hardware and Software

Computer hardware is the physical components that make up the computer system. Hardware is useless without software to run on it.

Software is instructions that tell computer hardware what to do. Software is useless unless there is hardware to run it on.

For a computer system to be useful it has to consist of both hardware and software.

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Completing the analogy:

Your physical body cannot function without your thoughts - and your thoughts need a physical body to exist within

Systems software

There are two main types of software which you will learn about in detail later on.

The first is 'systems software' which basically controls the way the computer works and tells it what to do. Examples include: Operating System Utilities User Interface

Applications software

The other type of software is called ‘applications software' and it is this type of software that you use to do your work and have fun. Some examples include: Word processors such as Microsoft

Word Spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel Databases such as Microsoft Access Games applications such as Half Life,

Call of Duty etc

Utility programs

A Utility program is designed to do one or perhaps two tasks very well and nothing else.

For example, you may want to compress a file to let you save it on to a floppy disk. For this task you would choose to use a file compression utility program.

Quite often, a Utility program is built right in to the operating system. For example Windows XP has a built in 'Zip' compression utility you can use to compress a file or folder.

Other utility programs

File management

Backup management

Disk Defragmenter

Types of utility programs

Here are some very common tasks that are carried out by various Utility programs:

File sorting File renaming File conversion (e.g. convert a sound file to MP3) File repair Disk monitoring and defragmentation (defragging) Printing jobs Backing up data. Anti-Virus Note that a utility program only does one or

perhaps two of these.

Drivers

A driver is another essential piece of system software

A driver is a specially written program which translates the commands from the operating system into commands that a piece of hardware (eg a printer) will understand. 

Each piece of hardware e.g. printer, monitor, scanner, keyboard etc will have its own driver. 

Printers from different manufacturers work in different ways, so a printer from Samsung will need a different driver than a printer from HP, Canon or Dell.

Drivers

If you try to use a device without the correct driver, then it probably won’t work.  If you do manage to get your new printer working without installing its driver, it will probably just print rubbish!

This is what comes out of a printer with the correct driver installed:

This is a printout This is what comes out of the printer with

the incorrect driver installed:Jajshu fuau&(( 89asd 8fa8s9d

When you buy a new piece of hardware, it will usually come with an installation disk which will load the new drivers into the operating system.  Very often, you can also download the drivers from the internet.

Homework:

Wiki page/ICT Basics

Hardware & Software:

2 x Read, Activity, Test

MAKE NOTES IN YOUR BOOKS!