COMPUTX.com

The History of Computers in Pictures

Top 7 Questions Answered:

1. Why do I need disk space and RAM?
   • filing cabinet = hard drive space vs. desk size = RAM
     • Bigger desk = more files open to look at once. Smaller desk = lots of swapping files back to the filing cabinet.”
   • Kitchen cabinets hold the dishes you’re not using at the moment (hard drive) and the countertop is used for items you are using (memory)
2. How can I get more RAM?
   • Check how much you have and how much you can get (use the configurator at Crucial.com)
   • Add more memory to your computer (an article at Microsoft.com)
3. Why do I need more bandwidth?
   • water pipe and multiple people trying to take a shower
   • multiple people to one milkshake analogy
   • Highway rush hour analogy
   • Everyone trying to rush out of a building at once when there is a fire drill
   • Some roads have more lanes than others, meaning that those roads have higher bandwidth
4. Why do I have to defragment my drive?
   • Like “a library with all the books in a long row A, B, C, etc., and then as each book representing a program or service gets taken out it doesn’t get returned to its correct place. When you go to look for that book again you may find it, but will take longer to do …defrag puts them back in the correct order.
   • Like making a cake. If you put each of the ingredients used to make the cake in a different room, it will take forever to get it done because you have to run around the house for each one. Computers need all the pieces of a program together, so they can load it faster.
   • Like a pool table; if I line up 15 balls in numerical order along the rail, how fast can you pick them up in numerical order? OK, now if I scatter them all over the table, how fast can you pick them up in numerical order?
   • You don’t. But let me tell you what it does. When you create your first document, life is good. When you create another document, the computer puts it right behind the first one, and so on. The computer doesn’t know how you may change any of these documents, so it doesn't leave much space between any of them. When you go to edit or change the first document, if it can’t fit the change in the same place, it saves that part of the document somewhere else. That part is a fragment. If you go back and change that document many times, there will be many fragments. Suddenly, one day, you go to open that document and it takes a long time. It’s trying to go find all of the fragments.  Windows treats its system files no differently from your documents. Everything eventually gets fragmented. Your entire system gets slower. Sometimes, you get errors or restarts for no reason. Defrag PUTS THE PIECES BACK TOGETHER. Then your system will run faster, programs may open quicker, etc.
5. Why can’t I put everything on the desktop?
   • Everyone has a junk drawer, usually in their kitchen. Imagine EVERYTHING you own is in that one drawer. Get up in the morning, go to the junk drawer and look for some clean clothes. Time to eat … go to the junk drawer and try to find a spoon and bowl. You would never be able to find anything. We organize our computers the same way we organize our lives. If I want a pair of socks, I go to the bedroom (directory), go to the dresser (subdirectory), top drawer (subdirectory). If I want a spoon, I go to the kitchen (directory) and go to the drawer next to the sink (subdirectory).
6. Why is my Internet connection so slow?
   • Like a city street system built for the horse and buggy with dirt roads and no traffic controls. Unfortunately, we now have so many more cars than we had buggies, we are operating bumper-to-bumper. This causes a lot of wrecks (collisions!) that make everything even slower than the lack of signals justifies. Upgrading would replace those dirt roads with a fully paved four-lane grid system with a coordinated traffic signal.
   • A network is a series of roads (cables) joined at intersections (hubs, switches) and controlled by traffic cops and lights (routers). Cars (data packets) leave their homes (sender) and with their destination address in hand (IP address) they set on their way.
7. What about viruses and malware?
   • “The Path” — These are the safe places on the Internet. This includes the company site and various well-known news sites, etc. “You know when you’ve stepped off the path, and although you may not get any malware right away, it’s only a matter of time once you stray from the path.”
   • “Pulling weeds” — This is the laborious process of removing malware from a computer, which may contain a number of hard-to-replace documents/programs.
   • “Plowing under” - This refers to reformatting… guaranteed to fix it every time.
8. What is the Registry?
   • Read this.

How big is a byte?

• There are 8 bits in a byte.
• There are 1000 bytes in a Kilobyte. 1,000 (Thousand)
• There are 1000 Kilobytes in a Megabyte. 1,000,000 (Million)
• There are 1000 Megabytes in a Gigabyte. 1,000,000,000 (Billion)
• There are 1000 Gigabytes in a Terabyte. 1,000,000,000,000 (Trillion)
• There are 1000 Terabytes in a Petabyte. 1,000,000,000,000,000 (Quadrillion)