4. 4
DATA :
Collection of facts
Raw information
INFORMATION :
Useful Information
Facts in organized manner
DATA PROCESSING :
Sequence of actions required to be
performed on data to convert it
into results.
The CPU is very important. It contains all the information that makes your computer what it is. In order, lets look at the following: The on/off button. Very important, this. Just push it in – they are usually located on the front of the CPU. Your CPU may stand upright or it may be horizontal. There is no difference, it’s just the way they’re made. If you buy one that needs to be upright, please don’t put it on its side. It won’t like it. The floppy disk drive. This is where those little diskettes go. You push them in. To get them out again, you push the button. They are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. The CD-Rom drive. CD Rom stands for Compact Disk Read Only Memory. They look just like (surprise, surprise) CDs. Look for the button under the CD drive. Push the one with the upward facing triangle and watch the drawer open. DON’T put your coffee cup in there, or your can of coke. They will break it. Close it by pushing the drawer, or the same button again. The restart button is for when you get into serious problems and the machine has “hung” or jammed. It’s the “last resort” button. You use it to re-boot (restart) the computer by pressing it once and letting it go. Try that now. It’s not actually good for the machine to send those jolts of electricity through it if you don’t need to. Like I said, last resort. The machine you are looking at doesn’t have a 51/4 inch floppy drive. They really are a thing of the past. Very old machines may still have them, but they aren’t used much any more.
These are the right terms to use. If you use these terms, no computer repairman or salesperson can ever make you feel like an idiot. CPU stands for Central Processing Unit. It’s the engineroom of your computer – the brains of the operation (You thought you were the brains, right? Wrong.) It’s sometimes referred to (incorrectly) as the “hard drive”. They call it that because your hard drive is in there, but it’s not the hard drive. The hard drive is only a part of the CPU The monitor is fancy computer speak for the screen. The mouse is one way of communicating with the computer. The keyboard is another way of communicating with the computer. Throwing something at the computer is a way of communicating, but it’s not very effective.
