3. Computer systems

Hardware and Software

A computer system includes hardware and software.
 

Hardware refers to all physical components of a computer system such as a monitor, printer, processor or memory.

Software refers to the data stored in the memory. In particular, this includes computer programs, i.e. sequences of instructions in a language that the computer can understand.


Hardware is therefore everything that you can actually touch in a computer system.
The stored programs and their data, i.e. software, on the other hand, cannot be touched.

Excursus: The operating system

Our application software (mail program, word processor, browser, etc.) does not need to know which hard disk is installed, in which area of the hard disk it should store its data or which processor is being used.

 

This is taken care of by special software, the operating system. The operating system mediates between hardware and application software and controls access to the hardware.

 

This is particularly important if several applications want to access the same hardware and the accesses need to be coordinated.

 

The best-known operating systems include:

 

Link tip: Graphic surfaces over the course of time
The graphical user interfaces of operating systems have changed quite a bit over the years. Guidebook Gallery collects lots of screenshots, from the first version of Windows to systems that no longer exist today, such as Amiga, MacOS X and Windows 10.

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