Computers are everywhere: at work, at School and at home
WORK
Email, memos and letters
Numerical and financial analysis
SCHOOL
Instructions and grading
Assignments and research
HOME
Play games and surf the internet
Communicate with friends and family
Q.: How many people have a computer in their home?
A computer is…
A collection of hardware components that function together as a
system
An electronic device, operating under the control of instructions stored
in its own memory that can…
Accept data (input)
Process the data according to specified rules (process)
Produce results (output)
Store results for future use (storage)
Information processing cycle is comprised of four basic operations
Information processing cycle:
o Input
o Process
o Output
o Storage
People who use computers directly are called… computer users or End
users
Why are computers so powerful?
A computer derives its power from its..
Capability to perform the information processing cycle with amazing
speed, reliability (low failure rate), and accuracy
Capacity to store huge amounts of data and information
Ability to communicate with other computers
What is the difference between bits and bytes?
Answer: Bits and Bytes both measure amounts of data. However, they are typically
used in two different contexts.
Bits, kilobits (Kbps), and megabits (Mbps) are most often used to measure data
transfer speeds. This may refer to how fast you are downloading a file, or how fast
your Internet connection is. For example, if you are downloading a file on cable
modem, your download speed might be 240Kbps. This is much faster than a dial-
up modem, which maxes out at 56Kbps.
Bytes, on the other hand, are used to measure data storage. For example, a CD
holds 700MB (megabytes) of data and a hard drive may hold 250GB (gigabytes). The
other important difference is that bytes contain eight bits of data. Therefore, a
240Kbps download is only transferring 30KB of data per second. However, kilobytes
per second is not as commonly used as kilobits per second for measuring data
transfer speeds. After all, using kilobits per second (Kbps) makes your connection
sound eight times faster!
It is important to know that bytes are abbreviated with a capital B, where as bits use
a lowercase b. Therefore, Mbps is megabits per second, and MBps is megabytes per
second. So 8Mbps is equal to 1MBps