CHAPTER 1:

REVIEW ON
COMPUTER
BASICS
By / Abd El Hady Magdy
 What is a
computing
knowledge ?
computing knowledge is comprised of
interactions with hardware and software.

The hardware is the tangible equipment, such as

the monitor, central processing unit, keyboard, and
mouse.

The software is a collection of computer

programs or instructions and related data that tell
the hardware what to do and how to do the
desired tasks.
 The main body of computer hardware is
the system unit:

01 A motherboard 02 A central processing unit

(CPU)

03 Random access
memory (RAM)

04
A hard disk drive (HDD)
 The main body of computer hardware is the
system unit:

01 A motherboard 03 Random access memory (RAM)

which is a large circuit board into which a set of data storage chips that temporary stores
all the other components connect. data and computer programs that are currently in use.
The programs and data are necessary to temporarily
reside in RAM to allow the CPU processes them.

02 A central processing unit (CPU)

which represents the brain of the
computer where all operations run 04 A hard disk drive (HDD)
inside.
is a storage unit that holds the operating
system files, programs,
and data that are retrieved by the CPU to
RAM when needed.
 The speed and performance of the CPU is
THE CENTRAL one of the important factors that
PROCESSING determines how efficient a computer works.
UNIT (CPU) A CPU is a very small, thin silicon wafer
that is encased in a ceramic chip and then
mounted on the motherboard, as shown in
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CPU speed is measured in gigahertz

(GHz).

The higher his number, the faster the CPU

can operate.
 • There are multiple sets of the key
THE CENTRAL components inside the chip, so the chip
PROCESSING can process multiple computer
instructions simultaneously. Dual-Core
UNIT (CPU) (2 cores) and Quad-Core (4 cores)
CPUs are quite common nowadays.

• If the CPU runs at 1.8 GHz, for example,

and is quad-core, it can process up to 4
times as much as a single-core CPU
could process at 1.8 GHz.

• There are two main manufacturers of

CPUs for personal computers: Intel and
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
More RAM can also make some applications perform better
in general.

Memory capacity is measured in gigabytes (GB), which is a

billion bytes. Most basic computers have at least 4GB
today, with higher end systems having 16GB or more.
RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY (RAM)

memory consists of small, thin

silicon wafers, encased in ceramic
chips and mounted on circuit
boards. The circuit boards holding
memory are called DIMMs, which
stands for dual inline memory
module.
HARD DISK DRIVE
(HDD)
An HDD stores all software data and
programs. When the computer is turned off,
whatever is on the hard drive remains there.

The operating system and programs load from

the hard drive into RAM, where they run.

Hard-drive capacity is also measured in

gigabytes (GB), like RAM. A typical hard drive
might be 500 GB or 1 terabyte (1,000 GB) or
even more.
Most hard drives sold today are the traditional mechanical type that use
metal platters to store data with magnetic polarity, but a newer type, called
a solid-state drive (SSD) which uses a type of memory, resulting in a fast,
quiet, and reliable (but expensive) storage alternative.
INPUT DEVICES

A keyboard
A touchpad
or
touchscreen

A mouse
Other devices such as
joysticks for computer
games and scanner that
A trackball converts hardcopy
documents into softcopy
images.
INPUT DEVICES: A keyboard

which is similar to a
typewriter keyboard. In
addition to typing words,

you can use a keyboard

to give the computer
commands or writing text.
INPUT DEVICES: A mouse

which is used to give

computer commands by
moving it around your desk
with your hand, which in turn
moves a pointer around
onscreen.
Using this pointer, you can
click an item, like a button or
menu item that causes an
action.
INPUT DEVICES: A trackball

which is like a
mouse except it’s
stationary and a ball
is rolled to move the
pointer onscreen.
INPUT DEVICES: A touchpad or
touchscreen

which is a rectangular touch-sensitive

pad with buttons adjacent to it.

On many notebook computers and

smartphones, a touchpad is a built-in
mouse substitute.

You drag your finger on the pad to

move the pointer onscreen.
OUTPUT
DEVICES
An output device is any peripheral that
receives data from a computer system
and output them to a user in a sensible
form like images on a screen or sound on
speakers.

Monitors, printers and speakers are the most common

output devices used with a computer.
Each computer has some type of display screen.

Depending on the type of computer, the display screen

may be built-in, or may be a separate unit called a
monitor. Some displays are touchscreen, where the
screen provides input to the computer.
OPTICAL DRIVES

Most desktop and notebook computers come with an optical drive,

which is a drive that will read CDs, DVDs, and/or Blu-ray discs.

A laser light shines on the surface, and a sensor measures how much
light is bounced back from a certain spot on the removable disk.
The optical drives in computers vary according to
these factors:
● Which disc types will it support? The
best drives support all three types:
Blu-ray, DVDs,

● Does it write discs, or only read

them? Writeable drives allow the
user to save data to blank discs.
Some blank discs can be written only
once (such as DVD-R); others can be
rewritten multiple times (such as
DVD-RW).
● .
The optical drives in computers vary according to
these factors: cont.

● How fast the drive can read or write

data? The popular writing speed of
CDs is 52X while it is 24X for DVDs.
1X is a reference speed and differ
based on the disc type. For example,
the 1X of DVD is 1,385,000 bytes per
second, while 1X of CD is only
153,600 bytes per second.
CONNECTING A COMPUTER
A desktop PC comes with a system unit, a keyboard, a mouse, and a monitor. The
monitor connects either to a VGA, DVI or HDMI port on the back of the system unit.
The keyboard and mouse connect to USB or PS/2 ports.
The computer may have further USB ports which can be used to connect other devices such as a
printer, scanner, camera and flash disks.

Ethernet port is used to connect to the wall network socket to connect to the local network and
the Internet.
USB ports have different speeds, according to their version.

USB 3.0 is the currently highest speed and has internal blue color.

These ports should be used with flash disks or high-resolution cameras to get high performance.
 NETWORK AND INTERNET
The connection is done through a
network adapter installed inside the
computer.
This adapter may be built-in the
computer motherboard, or it may be
added to the computer via an
expansion board or a device that
plugs into a USB port.

Network connectivity can be either

wired or wireless.
NETWORK AND INTERNET
A wired connection requires
connecting a cable from the
computer to the device that
supplies the Internet connection.
That type of connection is known
as Ethernet.
A wireless connection allows the
computer to communicate with
the network through radio
waves and is called Wi-Fi, or
wireless Ethernet.
Software is a collection of
computer programs or
applications along with its related
data.
FEATURES OF THE SOFTWARE
● Word or Excel are very
common programs used at
office.

● Some programs come

preinstalled on the computer.
For example, a computer
always has an operating
system, such as Microsoft
Windows, because the
operating system runs all the
other programs and manages
the computer [Link]
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• some programs are included within the
operating system, such as WordPad, a simple
word-processing program that comes with
Windows. Adobe
• Acrobat reader, a program with which you can
open PDF files, is an example of a popular
program that you can find on the Internet and
install on the computer for free.

Microsoft Windows is the most popular computer

OS. There have been several versions over the
years; such as Windows vista, 7, 8.1 and 10.
Thanks!
Do you have any questions?