A computer is a simply device (believe it or not) for data manipulation using program instructions based on your input. Computers have revolutionized communication in the world as we presently know it.

A computer has certain basic components. I'll list them out with some commonly known information as well.

Case: known as tower and can come in a plethora of different sizes, shapes and colors these days.

Motherboard: This is the unit that hold's everything together. It's like the frame of your car, everything is bolted to it.

Central Processing Unit: CPU or processor or Chip, this is the little fan dangled object that does all the smart stuff so you can do whatever task's you'll need to do with your computer.

Random Access Memory: known as RAM or just memory. The more the better, also the faster is runs the better too. Speed is calculated in megahertz.

Power Supply & adaptors: just know that your computer needs this to take power from the wall and gives it to the board which powers up everything else.

Video display: VGA adapter or graphics adapter too. If you'll be playing games you'll want a large one of these.

Removable Media: storage device of some sort, floppy drive, CD, DVD, Media card. This is basically anything your computer can put information on that you can walk away with.

Internal Storage: known as your hard disk or hard drive or just 'drive'. This is an extremely fast spinning device that stores all your files and your operating system.

Networking cards: if you don't know what this is you probly don't need to. It's most commonly used for connecting more than one computer together in a network or to get your computer out to the internet.

Basics of computer shopping:

Shop around (:--). Ask allot of questions, safest bet will be to stick to brand names. Dell, Compaq/HP is good or your local store will have there own recommendations. Basically you are going to want a computer with the largest CPU, most amount of RAM, and largest hard drive etc. Those are the most important that will effect speed. These days a decent speed tower for 2006 is 3GHZ CPU, 1 Gig Ram, 250 Gig hard disk. Basically get the biggest baddest computer possible for the least amount of donuts (dollars).

Computer technology is changing everyday. Some of the concepts and trends are explained below.

So what's a 'web server'?

Just a name for a computer that 'serves' out files to people that have requested them. When you visit a web page you will be requesting some computer located somewhere in the world to upload that webpage from their computer to yours. Since their files are the ones serving the files to you they are called 'web servers'. Sort of like when you are on MSN and you send a picture of someone from your computer to theirs. In this case your computer is actually 'serving' the files to theirs.

Load Balancing Web Server - getting techie here.

The internet contains millions of sites with hundreds of millions of computers connected to it. Some popular sites have to communicate with a large number of users or client computers. One computer trying to communicate with all the client computers will take a large amount of time. This cluttering problem can be solved by load balancing. Load balancing is a technique by which the load balancing web server distributes loads to other computers and processors to reduce computing time and obtain faster webpage loading.

Laptops - pretty cool if you need it.

Laptops are portable computers weighing between 3 to 4 kgs. Laptops have spread across the globe due to falling price levels. Todays laptops are lighter, have exceptional computing power, are affordable, and have sleek aesthetic appeal, yum!, not good for eating mind you. Panasonic has launched a waterproof laptop model. Though not completely waterproof it is resistant to coffee or water spills. There are commercial laptop variants available like the Dell latitude which is very popular. The model features the Intel core dual processors, weighs only 4.7 pounds, 2MB L2 cache, has wide aspect screens of 12, 14 and 15 inches and larger, 512 MB RAM and 4 USB ports. P.S. - always get more ram.

Tablet PCs.

Tablet PCs are light weight slate shaped hand-held computers. A tablet PC consists of a hand held touch screen with a light pen or stylus. Tablet PCs usually have inbuilt handwriting recognition software to recognize whatever is written on the screen with the stylus. In tablet PCs a keyboard is not required as data input can be done by touch or writing with the stylus. These are quite pricy but good for face to face business presentations.

Summary.

Computers have revolutionized the way we live and have a tremendous effect on our civilization, shaping the future. Computers are becoming more powerful and more affordable everyday. We hope this helps take a bit of the techie out of the basics of computers because they really are quite simple.