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By: Teeny Ingberg
Besides personal computers consisting of a main processing unit, it usually
includes the keyboard, mouse, memory or RAM, hard disk, dvd drive, monitor to
make it functional. You can usually purchase the whole computer system with the
processing unit, keyboard, mouse, memory, hard disk, dvd drive, monitor and
other component, unless you would like to buy each component separately. Online
or walk-in stores are great places to purchase a personal computer for home or
business use. Let us discuss a few basic components in the following sections.
Keyboard is an important component for a computer system. Users like you will
need a device such as a keyboard to enter your words and commands for the
computer. It is a input device you will use to answer questions from a website
while ordering an item, creating an article or essay, to enter registration
information to a new website. Each key represent an alphabet, number, function,
spacebar, alt, ctrl, and action keys like Insert, Delete, Home, Page Up, Page
Down, Home, End, arrows and other keys. Each time you type a key on the
keyboard, it sends a signal through the circuit underneath called Key Matrix
Circuit to the computer. The connection from a keyboard to the computer is
accomplished with a cable to a PS/2 or USB connection.
Another major component is the mouse, which is mostly used for clicking a
button, checkbox, option box, or to navigate around the screen on the monitor.
It is very useful if you are drawing on the screen, like painting a picture or
drawing a flowchart. There are basically ball mouse, optical mouse, and laser
mouse types. A ball mouse is a mouse with a round ball under the casing, moving
the mouse on a mouse pad will rotate the ball and then send the signal to the
computer for the navigation. An optical or laser mouse both use optical to send
signal to the computer, the difference is an optical mouse uses light-emitting
diode or photo diode to detect the movement, while laser mouse uses infrared
laser diode to sense the motions. Diodes are an electronics component that
generally emits light. The connection from a keyboard to the computer is
achieved with a cable to the RS-232C, PS/2 or USB connection on the
computer.
Memory components such as Random-Access memory or RAM or hard disk are
essential for the computer storages. RAM is basically used for temporary storage
of data, and the data will be erased after exiting a software, rebooting or
turning off the computer. The large size the RAM the higher performance and
faster the computer will work, because the computer can do most of the work on
it without copy data back and forth from the hard disk. Hard disk is a permanent
storage device for the computer, saved data will stay there until they are
erased. Again, the higher the access and rotation speed of the hard disk will
improve the overall performance for the computer system. DVD or Digital Video
Disc drive is another component that is important for you to install software or
store data to a cd or dvd disk. It can store gigabytes of data and you will also
look for the higher speed for its performance.
Teeny is a writer for finance, computer, travel, cars, shopping and other
subjects for many years, please visit http://www.fidetips.com/computer for more information.
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