TECH BLAST:COMPUTER HARDWAREMichael SauersTech RodeoDoane College26-28 July 2012

Form factors Desktop Laptop Netbook NetTop Tablet

Motherboard

Power Supply

CPU Intel/AMD Different form factors Speed measured in gigahertz (GHz) Can have multiple “cores”

Dual-core, Quad-core

Cooling System Directs heat away

from the CPU Heat Sink / Fan / Liquid Cooling

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13841229@N00/171474579/

Memory (RAM) Gigabytes Different types

SRAM/DRAM DDR, DDR2, DDR3

Different form factors Laptop vs. desktop

Check with your computer’s manual for the right type!

Getty Images

Storage Hard Drive

Internal vs. External Solid-state Drive Optical Media

CD-ROM DVD-ROM Blu-ray

Graphics Card May be built into the

motherboard Can add more

powerful dedicated card which has it’s own dedicated video RAM

Video Connectors VGA S-Video DVI HDMI (images not to scale)

Connectors Firewire Ethernet WiFi USB

USB Connection Types

Operating System Windows MacOS Linux

Ubuntu RedHat Fedora

32-bit/64-bit

So, you want to buy a new computer? Does your old one do what you need it

to do? What is your budget? Do you have special requirements? No, there isn’t a “best” time to buy.

THANKS!Michael SauersTechnology Innovation LibrarianNebraska Library Commissionmichael.sauers@nebraska.gov