4.6 - Hardware and Software Flashcards
Define Hardware
Hardware is any electronic/ electro mechanical, physical parts.
Define Software
Software is all programs that make the computer function without any physical means
What are the two main branches of Software
System Software and Application Software
What are the 4 main types of System Software
Operating Systems,
Utility Programs,
Library Programs and
Translators
What are the 4 main types of Application Software
General Purpose,
Special Purpose,
Off-the-shelf and
Bespoke
What is System Software
System Software is necessity/ required software that allows the computer to run
Name some of the key tasks of System Software
It allocates jobs to the processor
It Manages Peripherals (anything outside of the CPU)
It maintains software security
It performs installations
It translates program code into machine code.
What is Application Software?
Applications software is optional software
What is the Operating system?
The operating system is the middle man that interfaces directly with the hardware. It performs resource managment and a user interface in order to hide complexity’s from the user.
What is Utility software
Utility software is software that Analyses, Configures, Optimises or maintains computer systems. Examples of this are: Defragmentation, Uninstalling, updating and backing up.
What is the purpose of system restores?
As it allows you to roll back to a saved state it means that if an installation causes your computer to crash you can “Roll back” to when you didn’t have the program on your machine.
What is the purpose of Defragmentation
Defragmentation allows data to be collected sequentially on hard drives so that drive heads don’t need to jump around as much in order to access data.
What is a library
A library is a collection of precompiled routines that perform specific tasks and can be used by other programs when imported. These include stuff like Math or Turtle Libarys
Translators
Translators convert programs into machine code so the computer can run them. Source code is converted into object code
What are the three types of translators
Compiler, Assembler and Interpreter
