Hardware
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| Your System - What Did You Buy? |
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You hear terminology all the time - RAM, CD-R, CD-RW, MB, DVD, Zip, Flash Drive, on and on. You may think that you're the only person confused by these terms. Not true. There are thousands of people out there who are swamped and overwhelmed with techo-lingo. Most feel very funny about asking questions. These pages will give you the basics of this terminology. Just so that you know what on earth is going on. Or, you can visit the glossary so that you can go and look up a word and find out what everything means. For now, one thing at a time. |
| You have four obvious pieces of equipment: |
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Your entire system is composed of both hardware and software. Here's metaphor for you: The hardware is the record, tape, or CD; the software is the music or movie which is stored on any one of those things. Take a look at the computer itself for a few minutes and understand what is going on. Remember that you are looking mostly at the cover of the internal components. But there’s more. Starting with the front of the computer: First, you will see a flat plate about 1" high by 5" long. This is the door of your CD player. Near it is at least one button. Pressing the button will release the CD from the computer; it will slide out, allowing you to place either a music or software CD in it. Pressing the button again will close the door. Most computers now have 2 CD drives. One of them might be RW for Read/Write CDs, or it can be a DVD player. It will be marked on the front of the computer. What else is on the front of your computer? The power button, perhaps 2 USB ports, and connectors for speakers, headsets, and a microphone. The speaker/headset and microphone jacks are round. The USB portis small and thin. A quick look at the back of the computer. There are oddly-shaped connectors back there. Some are male, with prongs; some are female, with pores. Some are telephone connectors; some are small and round like speaker connectors. If your system is fully connected, most are being used. They connect your computer to the peripheral devices, i.e., printer, monitor, mouse, phone, power. |
| How are Drives Designated? |
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When PCs were born, there were no hard drives, only floppy drives and floppy disks. There were two of them, side by side. The left was Drive A: - the one on the right was Drive B:. With the birth of the hard drives several years later, a designator had to be assigned. The obvious choice is Drive C:. That convention has remained all along. If you have two hard drives, they will be C: and D:. Your CD player has a designator as well. It is the next available letter. So if you have one hard disk, your CD is drive D:; two hard disks and your CD is drive E:, etc. |
| Disks - External |
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Why do you need external disks? They are for Backups - the most important thing that you will do for yourself and your data. Here’s what happens: You begin to work on your computer. You save files. Documents, spreadsheets, accounting information, cards you write, lots of things. They get stored on Drive C: Everything is wonderful and you keep working and saving and everything stays wonderful. Then, one day, for no apparent reason, you go to retrieve an existing file and something happens. What happens? Thing One: You can’t find it. Thing Two: You can’t load it. Thing Three: You can’t read it. Now What? Well, if you’ve been making regular backups, like every day, you have no problem. But, if you haven’t ... You must redo whatever it is that you’ve lost. Aside from the very valuable time that this takes, your stress level will go sky high! This is one of the most frustrating things that can happen. It is a completely avoidable problem. |
| Flash Drives |
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Flash drives are USB
(universal serial bus) devices. They are often called Thumb Drives because
they are about the size of a thumb. They are fast and they hold
lots of data. If you don't have one, go and buy one!
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| External Hard Drives: Fast, More Capacity |
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External drives are now the standard method for making backups. Their capacity is hundreds of times more than any diskette. If you are using your computer regularly, it is a very wise decision to go and buy an external hard drive. Not only do they store enormous amounts of data, they are portable. |
| CDs: Very Fast, Lots of Capacity |
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Most computers are sold with writeable CDs. This means that you can copy files to them. The files can be documents, spreadsheets, pictures, sounds, and movies, basically, anything that you store on your computer's hard drive. There are CD-R and CD-RW types. |
| Win Zip |
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This is a Program, not a piece of Hardware. Lots of people are getting confused between diskettes, zip disks, and WinZip. So I'll try to make this all much clearer. Remember that diskettes are the least expensive option for keeping copies of your files. On the down side, they also hold the least amount of information. It used to be that whenever you bought a computer, it always had a diskette drive installed in the front. Not necessarily so any more. Most computers are sold with writeable CD drives. You may have had your computer for a while so you don't have a CD writer. Use a Zip Drive instead. Zip Drives, must be requested and purchased specifically. As of the year 2000, many people are purchasing their computers with Zip Drives already installed in them. But, there are far more people who purchase the computer, and discover later that Zip Drives even exist! Then they go out and buy one. For the purposes of this site, we'll assume that you don't have one installed directly into the machine, and have purchased one on your own. You are probably keeping it right on top of the computer, and, if you want to sleep easily, keep a Zip Disk right inside there and do your regular backup. Right!!!!! WinZip is a program; it is Not an item of hardware used to back up your files. What is the purpose of WinZip? To compress your files - to make them occupy physically less room on the drive. That's all. So what is the big deal? The big deal is that many, many files are quite large and that causes at least two problems:
It compresses your file, to a considerably smaller size, thereby allowing you to transport that file far more efficiently. In addition, you will probably one day receive a file that has been Zipped. You will not be able to decompress that file if you do not have WinZip installed on your machine. Click here to get your free copy of WinZIp. If you like it, which I know that you will, you can always go back to the site and purchase a version that has more features. |
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