واحد ساری Technical English For Computer and Information Technology Students Alireza Ghonoodi

واحد ساری

Technical English

For

Computer and Information Technology

Students

Alireza Ghonoodi

2013

www.ghonoodi.com

Contents:

Introduction…… page 2

Unit 1 Introduction to Computer Software …….. page 4

Unit 2 The Software Development Cycle…….. page 8

Unit 3 Learning about Operating Systems……. Page 11

Unit 4 Computer Hardware Peripherals……. Page 15

Unit 5 Computer Storage vs. Computer Memory ……. Page 19

Unit 6 Basic Networking…… page 25

Unit 7 The Rise of the World Wide Web …….. page 29

Unit 8 Recognizing Different Types of Computers …… page 33

Unit 9 Some Common Computer Input Devices……. page 37

Unit 10 Top 10 Most Popular Programming Languages …… page 41

Computer and Internet acronyms …… page 47

Introduction:

Computer

Technically, a computer is a programmable machine. This means it can execute a programmed list of instructions and respond to new instructions that it is given. Today, however, the term is most often used to refer to the desktop and laptop computers that most people use. When referring to a desktop model, the term "computer" technically only refers to the computer itself -- not the monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Still, it is acceptable to refer to everything together as the computer. If you want to be really technical, the box that holds the computer is called the "system unit."

Some of the major parts of a personal computer (or PC) include the motherboard, CPU, memory (or RAM), hard drive, and video card. While personal computers are by far the most common type of computers today, there are several other types of computers. For example, a "minicomputer" is a powerful computer that can support many users at once. A "mainframe" is a large, high-powered computer that can perform billions of calculations from multiple sources at one time. Finally, a "supercomputer" is a machine that can process billions of instructions a second and is used to calculate extremely complex calculations.

Hardware

Computer hardware refers to the physical parts of a computer and related devices. Internal hardware devices include motherboards, hard drives, and RAM. External hardware devices include monitors, keyboards, mice, printers, and scanners.

The internal hardware parts of a computer are often referred to as components, while external hardware devices are usually called peripherals. Together, they all fall under the category of computer hardware. Software, on the other hand, consists of the programs and applications that run on computers. Because software runs on computer hardware, software programs often have system requirements that list the minimum hardware required for the software to run.