Posts tagged computer concepts
Learn Computer Basics in Plain English
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
19 Plays
Worth Godwin Computer Training
Non-Technical Explanation of How Computers Work
A Non-Technical Explanation of How Computers Work —
This is a computer lesson I just recorded which ties together a number of different specific explanations of computer terms which I’ve used over the years.
I wanted to have a single lesson which ran people through a kind of overview of how computers operate — explained in a way that even extremely “tech challenged” computer users would be able to relate to.
In the lesson I cover the following:
- what memory and drives are
- what a CPU is
- what programs or applications are
- what documents are
- why your computer can be slow doing some things more than others
- why the computer needs memory (what it’s for)
- why adding RAM often “speeds it up”
I may go into more detail than might be needed by some people, but I do this because I don’t want to leave anyone out, especially the real basic computer users who need my help the most.
Take a listen and tell me what you think. — posted from my computer training SoundCloud account
I had to post this comic because it’s so familiar — not because I’m a programmer who gets asked tech support questions (in fact, I started out as a computer tech whose job it was to help with those kinds of problems.
It’s familiar because I see people generally failing to understand the computer term “program” (and thus by extension the term programmer) most of the time.
Many computer users often seem to use “program” when they should be saying “install” — for example they’ll say “I programmed Word on my computer” when they meant they installed it on their computer.
In equivalent terms, that’s kind of like saying you designed and built a TV set from scratch when in fact all you did was put it on a shelf and plug it in. :)
(via fuckyeahcomputerscience)
