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** What I have included here are things that I’ve found a lot of people have questions about. I tried to explain all things in simple English and used “technical terms” as little as possible. There is a more complete glossary as well.** -RM
The "Hardware" is the physical parts of the computer, the things you can actually touch, such as the tower, mouse, keyboard, printer, etc. These things are also known as "peripherals". In contrast, the "Software" is untouchable. Software exists as ideas and concepts,but it has no substance. Software is the program that allow you to interact with the computer. For example, Mavis Beacon is the Software Program that is a typing tutor to help us learn to type. Books can provide a useful analogy. The pages and the ink are the hardware, while the words, sentences, paragraphs, and the overall meaning are the software. A computer without software is like a book full of blank pages -- you need software to make the computer useful just as you need words to make a book meaningful.
1) The Tower—Inside of the tower are all of the components that run the computer and is, in essence, "The Computer". Without the tower, you would see nothing on the monitor screen.
2) Mouse—the device by which you control the cursor (the arrow on the computer screen). It has two buttons, left and right. You use the left to perform an action (open, close programs for instance), and the right button to give a menu of options, which varies depending what you are clicking on.
3) Keyboard—much like a typewriter keyboard, allows you to type entries onto the computer.
4) Monitor-Another term for the display screen
Other peripherals, or hardware, could include a printer, camera, scanner, microphone, etc.
1- The Desktop—Referring to “the desktop” in reference to computers means the first screen you see when you turn on your computer, not the actual top of the desk.
2- The Cursor- the arrow that shows you what the mouse is pointing at. A special symbol or a blinking underline character, that shows where the next letter or character will be displayed. To type in different areas of the screen, you need to move the cursor. The cursor may also appear as a small arrow, called a pointer. It can also appear as a little hand, meaning a "link".
3- Icon- A small picture that represents an object or program. To open a program or object, move the pointer to the icon and click (or double click) the mouse button.
4- Window-This is an enclosed, rectangular area on a display screen. When you open a program or file, it is displayed in a window.
5- Start Button- The button on the bottom left hand corner of the Desktop Screen. You can access everything inside the computer by clicking on this button (Programs, functions, etc)
7- Scroll Bar—on the right side of the page, it moves the page up or down. Click on the bar itself and hold the mouse button down and move the mouse up or down to move the page. You can also click on the little up or down arrow buttons on either end of the scroll bar to move the page.
8-Window Controls—on the top, right hand side. The first button allows you to minimize the window, the second allows you to re-size (restore up or down), and the third (the X), closes the window. When leaving the computer, make sure all the windows are closed. Any unused windows should also be closed because having too many windows open at one time can cause the computer to freeze.
10-URL—Which stands for “Universal Resource Locator” is another name for a Web Address. There is a ton of information on the internet. The way to organize this info so that people can find what they are looking for is to give every web site it’s own unique address. A web address starts with “www” which stands for “World Wide Web”, usually followed by “http”, which means “Hypertext Markup Language”, a language of codes which is used to create web pages, then the name of the site, followed by a suffix like “.com”,“.org”, “.net”, to name a few. This suffix indicates the type of site (“com” indicates “commerce” or “commercial site”, “org” indicates “an organization or non-profit”, etc.) These are like the equivalent of zip codes and they are constantly coming up with more suffixes to accommodate the growing number of web sites in existence.
11-Internet—This is also called “the web” or “world wide web”. It is a ‘web’ of data that exists in ‘cyber space’. It is an abstract concept and the best analogy I can come up with is this: Think of the internet as a huge city full of information (data). Each category of information exists in a different building in that city. The buildings are like the web sites. In order to access that information and find what you are looking for, you must know the address of the building containing your info. Each building has it’s own individual address, just as every web site has it’s own address. Without that organization, the information would be unreachable. So to sum up, the ‘city’ is like the Internet, the web sites making up the internet are like the ‘buildings’ making up the ‘city’, each with it’s own ‘address’ to better find them. To take it one step further, the ‘road’ that leads you from your ‘house’ (your home computer) to the ‘city’ (the internet) is called a “browser” program (ex. Internet Explorer as described below in “Commonly Used Programs”).
12-ISP—Internet Service Provider (ex. AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Net Zero, etc). In order to access the internet, you must pay someone to allow you ‘entry’. An example is as follows: You have a TV set at home. In order to access cable programming like HBO, Showtime, etc, you must pay your cable company for access. It is the same with your home computer. Rates vary depending on type of connection and different service providers.
