by Abby Way

Created on: June 10, 2009

Hardware comes in a few different "breeds", and one of the best-known kinds is computer hardware. It's very different from traditional hardware, which might consist of tools, nails, and other metal parts.

WHAT IS COMPUTER HARDWARE?
Computer hardware is, quite simply, all the physical components of a computer system on which either input is given (like a keyboard or mouse), or output is displayed (like a monitor or printer).

Computer hardware includes such things as a keyboard and mouse, which you can use to give it instructions on what you want it to do. These send signals to the other pieces of hardware and operating system to carry out your command.

Another type of hardware includes monitors and printers, which display the output of the commands you give with your keyboard and/or mouse.

There's other hardware that you might not directly control, such as a floppy drive or CD drive, hard drive, RAM, etc. These perform a variety of functions. For example, the floppy drive and CD drive attempt to "read" whatever you put into them. If you put a CD into a CD drive, it will try to read the contents of the CD and send the results to the rest of the computer.

The hardware alone does not make the computer system run, however. The hardware cannot process all the commands that a user needs to give it. It needs something to bridge the gap between hardware and user, which is where the operating system comes in.

WHAT IS THE OPERATING SYSTEM?
Some examples of well-known operating systems are Windows XP or Windows Vista, Mac OS X, or Linux. These are all different types of operating systems, but they essentially do the same things.

In layman's terms, the operating system brings the computer to life. The operating system is the environment in which programs like Microsoft Word, Mozilla Firefox, and iTunes run. It gives the user instructions and receives instructions from the user, "translates" them into computer terms, and passes along the instructions to the computer's hardware, all in the blink of an eye.

OVERVIEW
Thus, we see that the computer is made up of:

-The hardware, or the physical components of the system, which processes commands.
-The software, most importantly, the operating system, displays the computer's activity in terms that we humans can read. It acts as the go-between for the computer hardware and the user.

No computer can work properly if it doesn't have both computer hardware and an operating system, but perhaps most importantly, computers also need users like you to direct them!

Learn more about this author, Abby Way.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.