Hardware and software Requirements Essay

Floppy dish The standard 3 1/2 floppy saucer is a thin, flexible plastic record coated in metal oxide, enclosed in a smashed plastic casing for protection. A standard high density disc has a stock space of 1. 44 Megabytes. Hard Disks The t every(prenominal) plow used with conventional PCs consists of integrity or to a greater extent disk platters, which be permanently sealed inside a casing. Hard disks countenance a capacity of between 2Gb and 10Gb, though external hard drives can be plugged into the computer to provide extra storehouse space. For large-scale applications storing extensive amounts of data, more hard disks would be used.The disks can be fixed or removable, although the fixed disks be more reliable and create more storage capacity. Data is neckclothd on the concentric tracks, which are split up into sectors. Data is therefore injectd in one of the sectors so that it minimises the movement of the read- pull through heads, thereby minimising access tim e. compact disc read- scarcely memory CD-ROMs can store around 680Mb of data, which is the equivalent of hundreds of floppy disks. CD-ROMs do not transfer data as quickly as the hard disk drive. As the name suggests the disks are read-only memory.Unlike a magnetised disk they are created by burning tiny holes into the surface of the disk, a optical maser beam is then reflected off the surface of the disk, detecting the presence or absence of pits, which re show the binary digits. Worm disks (Write Once, Read Many) These look precise similar to the CD-ROM in appearance but are amber rather than silver in colour. These disks can be used to economise your own material and are ideal for archiving or storing images or data, which volition not be changed. They are popular in the pirate intentness because a i 5 blank disk can store upto i 20 000 worth of package and sell for i50 i 80.They are used by less reputable PC political partys which install the software onto the PC so they can charge the consumer more for the package. However because of the competition in the pirate industry at present many of these carry viruses which can cause chaos on the hard drive. Magneto-optical disks Magneto-optical disks integrate optical and laser technology to enable read and write storage. A 5 1/2 disk can store up to 1 Gb. These disks may in future replace genuine magnetic disks, but at present the technology is still create and the disks are too expensive, slow and unreliable to be in far-flung use.Magnetic tape Magnetic tape was developed in the fifties and very quickly became the primary means of storing data. The data is stored on magnetic tape in the system of dots of magnetism. It is used widely for archiving past transactions or other data that may be needed again, for example, sometime(a) news readings that have been collected over a number of years. Jaz set ab break Two Gigabytes is a tape drive and a mass storage device mainly used for backing up large f iles or batches of files i. e. end of day transaction backup for banks or businesses. packet requirements and techniques packet is the name given to the course of studys that direct the operation of the computer. It can be divided into two main congregations, constitution software and applications software. System software is the programs compulsory to run the computer system and applications software is the programs required to carry knocked out(p) a particular application such as stock subordination Systems software This is the software that the microcomputer system needs to run. In this group there are three divisions operating systems, utilities and compilers/interpreters/assemblers.Operating systems An operating system is a set of programs that allows the user to perform tasks without having to know how they are done. For example, a user can give a command to save a file on disk without having to know where the file go forth be stored or how it result be retrieved agai n. Applications programs are usually scripted to cipher with a particular operating system e. g. Excel will only prepare with Windows and not with Apple Mac, which has a different operating system. public utility company programs Utility programs perform common tasks that every computer user will need at one stage or another.They carry out such jobs as formatting and copying disks, deleting files from disks, sorting information into a required order, and to help with the testing of programs that have been written. Compilers, interpreters and assemblers These are programs that translate the programing language that is used into a form that the computer can understand. Compilers work by translating the whole of the program from what is known as the source program into the object program which will be in a form that the computer can understand.Interpreters are programs that translate and execute source programs one statement at a time. An assembler is a program supplied by the compu ter manufacturer that will translate a program that was written in assembly language (low-level programming language) into machine code. Applications software In large organisations that have a mainframe or minicomputer we would find that programmers were occupied whose job it would be to write the programs for the applications that the organisation wished to have run on the computer, such as payroll, stock keep back or hospital appointments.The software may be designed specifically for one particular company and written especially for them using a programming language or software such as database management system. Alternatively, the software may be purchased off the shelf. General purpose software Most prevalent purpose software is sold as a package, including a CD containing the software. Below is the most common packages that you would find on the market to regard 1. Applications spreadsheets, database, word processing, Desk Top Publishing 2. Presentation CD based presentati ons (Power Point, Director) 3. mesh Publishing web page development software (Front Page, Dreamweaver, Flash) 4. Programming Software BASIC, Visual Basic, C++, Java, Pascal, HTML 5. Creation and Editing Photo Shop, cay Shop Pro, Premier, Coral Draw 6. Utility Anti-virus, tidy and compression, Doctors. The newer computer systems will have these utilities on them already. Software such as word processing, spreadsheet and databases is sometimes refereed to as generic software. This means that many of the packages can be make to do many different tasks, and is not specifically for one slip of application.The other types of application software such as stock control and payroll as mentioned before are special purpose because they have been designed to complete one particular task. Conclusion I show this assignment very interesting and now feel I have a much sounder understanding off computer ironware and software. I would have liked to incorporate more images into the assignment as r eference to each of the products described, but was unable to find all of the images that I required, and also had problems trying to transfer them from the internet.Apart from this I feel quite an satisfied with the overall assignment and hope that I have entered all the data needed and presented it in a clear fashion.Bibliography Corbitt T, (1990), Information engineering science And Its Applications. Avon, United Kingdom can Press Heathcott P M, (2000), A take aim Computing. Ipswich, United Kingdom Payne-Gallway Publishers Ltd References Corbitt T, (1990), Information Technology And Its Applications. Avon, United Kingdom Bath Press Heathcott P M, (2000), A Level Computing. Ipswich, United Kingdom Payne-Gallway Publishers Ltd.