Software – refers to all types of computer programs. Software programs are simply a huge set of instructions, which make the computer do something useful. They tell the computer what to do with the information you are feeding into it, what to show on screen, and what to print. In a computer system, the hardware and software work together. There are two kinds of software, Operating Systems and Application Software. |
| A computer system can only work if it has two things, hardware and software. Hardware includes all those physical elements which make up a computer system such as the monitor and the mouse. Even peripherals such as a printer are considered as hardware, as well as those parts found in the system unit such as the hard disk and the CPU.
In other words all those physical elements which you can see and touch. Hardware on its own is useless. A computer needs software to operate. |
A computer needs data. Hardware which helps us input this data is called an Input device. Some input devices used to enter data in a computer are: keyboard, mouse, trackball, scanner, touchpad, light pen, joystick, digital camera and microphone. |
| Operating Systems software is a program that controls the computer and enables it to run applications software. Systems software allows the computer to manage its internal resources.
This Operating System software is designed to allow the computer system to manage its own resources (disks, monitor, keyboard, and printer). This software runs the basic computer operations - it tells the hardware what to do and how, and when to do it. Applications software cannot run without system software. WINDOWS is an operating system software. Besides Windows there are other operating systems for example DOS, MAC OS, Linux, Unix and OS/2 Warp. |
Applications software are programs that help the user carry out specific tasks on the computer. Such software has been written for a specific application - such as word-processors, spreadsheets, databases and presentation software. These are some of the Application software: MS Word, MS Excel, MS Access, MS PowerPoint, MS Publisher, MS Internet Explorer, MS Outlook, Macromedia Flash. |
| An output device is any piece of equipment that translates information processed by the computer into a form that we can understand e.g. monitor, printers and speakers. |
Form 1 Concepts of Information Technology Slide the mouse over the images and read the notes. |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
