FREE online courses on Information Technology - Chapter 6 IT - FUNDAMENTALS
Fundamentals
This part contains important materials you will need to make
decisions about technology, intelligently. The decision maker must understand
some of the technical issues involved. A basic knowledge of technology is
necessary to manage information systems activities effectively.
Users and managers are often involved in the selection of the
appropriate technology for an application. Should the application run on a large
or midsized computer, or on PCs connected on a local area network? The user may
be involved in the selection of the entire computer system. Possibilities here
range from a personal computer to a large general-purpose computer system. It is
also very likely that the acquisition of specific devices, such as laser
printers, networks, optical storage units, and similar equipment will involve
the manager. Finally, management must decide where computers will be located and
what applications each computer will execute.
There are also many important decisions concerning computer
software. Many organizations have developed comprehensive databases in order to
run basic transactions processing applications. More recently organizations have
compiled large amounts of data into “data warehouses” in order to gather
information useful for providing better customer service and marketing products
and services.
Why should one be interested in the way computer equipment
works? You may already own a computer and find that you do not need to
understand much about computer to use it. On the other hand, it is quite likely
that you will be involved in purchasing computers, either for yourself, or for
other people. The numbers involved are hard to imagine!
Today's marketplace is confusing one. There are variety of
computer vendor chips with different capabilities and prices. What is the bus
and how does it influence the speed of a computer? What are RAM and ROM? Does it
matter it has a higher clock speed than another? To make intelligent purchasing
decisions, you must understand how computers work and particularly how certain
features influence their performance. In this chapter, we discuss the basics of
computers.
People invented computers and their associated equipment, and
one of the most difficult aspects of computers is a consequence of this human
design. Of the engineering and design decisions made during computer
development, many appear arbitrary. Computers science is unlike a field such as
mathematics, in which theorems are developed and proved rigorously. The reasons
for a certain design feature may not be obvious even to a computer expert.
Designers make decisions by balancing performance estimates of how computer will
be used against costs. Because of the underlie the operation of most computer
systems, although specific machines differ from any general discussion.
