Transcript Slide 1
Technology In Action Technology In Action Chapter 6 Evaluating Your System: Understanding and Assessing Hardware Chapter Topics • Evaluating your system: • System reliability • Binary representation To Buy or To Upgrade? • Moore’s Law: the number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years Assessing Your Hardware: Evaluating Your System • Assess the computer’s subsystems • The subsystems include – CPU – RAM – Storage devices Evaluating the CPU • How does the CPU work? – Control unit – Arithmetic logic unit (ALU) – Speed: • MHz • GHz Speed of CPU Abbreviation Stands for KHz MHz GHz Kilo Hertz Mega Hertz Giga Hertz Cycles per Second 1,000 1,000,000 1,000,000,000 That is... Thousand Million Billion They are different from KB, MB, and GB Upgrading the CPU • Expensive • Easy to install • Motherboard compatibility Evaluating RAM • Random access memory (RAM): – Temporary storage (memory) – Volatile How Much Ram is Needed? System Software Windows XP 128 MB Productivity Software MS Office Pro 128 MB Entertainment Software Windows Media Player 64 MB Graphics MS Picture It! 128 MB Adding RAM • Increase system performance Evaluating Storage • Types of storage devices: – Hard drive – Floppy drive – Zip disk drive – CD/DVD – Flash memory • Nonvolatile storage The Hard Disk Drive • Storage capacity up to 500 GB Portable Storage • Gives us the ability to move data from one computer to another • Types of portable storage devices: – Floppy disk: • Capacity 1.44 MB – Zip disk: • Capacity 100 MB to 750 MB – Flash drive Optical Storage • Optical media: – CD-ROM • Read Only Memory – CD-R • Recordable – CD-RW • ReWritable – DVD-ROM • Read Only Memory – DVD-R • Recordable – DVD-RW • ReWritable Evaluating System Reliability • Performance: – Slow – Freezes – Crashes Upkeep and Maintenance • System tools: – Disk cleanup • Unnecessary files • Control panel: – Add/remove programs Update Software and Hardware Drivers • Software: – Automatic updates – Patches • Hardware: – Download updated drivers Binary (Numbering) System The Binary System: Using On/Off Electrical States to Represent Data & Instructions • The binary system has only two digits - 0 and 1 • Bit - binary digit (0 or 1) • Binary to decimal: 0: 1: 10: 11: 100: 0 1 2 3 4 The Binary (Numbering) System • Binary: 101: 110: 111: 1000: 1001: 1010: Decimal 5 6 7 8 9 10 The Binary (Numbering) System • Byte - group of 8 bits used to represent one character, digit, or other value The Binary System • Kilobyte about 1000 bytes (1024) • Megabyte 1024) about one million bytes (1024 x • Gigabyte about one billion bytes (1024 x 1024 x 1024) The Binary System • ASCII - the binary code most widely used with microcomputers. • Unicode - uses two bytes (16 bits) for each character rather than one byte (8 bits). • Be able to represent all the characters of virtually every language in existence Exercise • The storage of a floppy disk, a CDR, a hard disk are 1.44M, 700M, and 50G respectively. If a picture size is 100k, how many pictures can be saved in the floppy disk, the CDR, and the hard disk?