From the course: Working with Computers and Devices

What is a computer?

From the course: Working with Computers and Devices

What is a computer?

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- These days the term computer can refer to many different types of devices. We have desktop computers, laptop or notebook computers and mobile devices like tablets and phones are even considered computers. At the most basic level, a computer is an electronic device that you use to create, process, store, or retrieve different types of data and information. For example, you might create a word processing document on a desktop computer or browse the internet on a tablet device, or email photos from your mobile phone. All computers consist of two main parts, hardware and software. Software refers to the programs that run on the computer. Basically software programs are the parts of the computer you can't physically touch, like a word processing application, an email program and even the computer's operating system is software. Most computers come with built in software and you can install a virtually unlimited number of other software programs that you might want or need to use on your computer. Now, hardware refers to all the physical parts that make up a computer. For example, on a desktop computer, you have the main unit that contains the central parts like the CPU, the RAM or memory, and the hard drive. With desktop computers, you also need an external monitor, also called a display and devices for inputting information like a keyboard and a mouse. On computers like laptops, tablets, or mobile devices, the display is built into the device and they all generally have built in keyboards or, as is the case with many tablets and mobile devices, the keyboard appears on screen when needed. Computer hardware can also refer to any number of accessories you can connect to the computer such as printers, scanners, speakers, and so on, which give additional functionality to the computer. So again, when we talk about computers at the most basic level, we're talking about an electronic machine comprised of various pieces of hardware on which you can operate various pieces of software.

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