Class #11 What's hiding in the box?

When I buy a computer, what do I base my decision on? The first step is to determine how I'll be using it and what my budget is. Computer specs are a jumbled list of acronyms, but with some research can be diciphered. So...what DO I use my computer for these days anyway?

• Word Processing


• Spreadsheets


• E-mail


• Photo management


• Photo posting


• Web browsing


• Blogging


• Social networking


• Studying and homework


• Research


• Music

I think the computer I have now is fairly adequate for what I do, although it could use some additional RAM...although I'm not sure why. So let's take a look at what's in my laptop to learn about computer components and how I might improve on mine. My current components include:

• Intel Pentium M 1600 MHz processor
• "M" for mobile; intended for use in laptops
• Introduced in March 2003; I purchased it in August 2003.
• Was part of the newly-introduced Intel Centrino platform
• Maximum power consumption of 3-25 watts; a built to maximize power efficiency and extend battery life.
• 1600MHz= 1.6GHz; 1.6 billion frequency waves a second: AKA clock speed: rate at which it processes basic computations and operations. Clock speed is just one of a few elements that dictate a computers overall speed. Others include RAM, the clock speed of the RAM, the clock speed of the front-side bus and cache size.
• 1 GB RAM: RAM (Random Access Memory) is made up of a set of chips and is where data and programs are stored while they are being used by the computer. So if I add more RAM, my computer can access and utilize more or larger programs simultaneously. My problem was occuring while running my existing "host" operating system (Windows XP Pro) and running a Virtual Machinen (VM) with an entirely different "guest" version of Windows XP for the class CS1031 class I'm taking. If I had any programs like Word or Excel open on the host OS, I would get an error saying there wasn't enough memory and to shut down some programs and try opening the VM again.
• Has a single-core 32-bit x86 microprocessor: handles 32 bits of data at a time.
• Microprocessor: the brains of a computer; part of the CPU (Central Processing Unit) that manipulates data and sends back results.
• Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU): the processor within the microprocess that handles manipulation of whole numbers and integers.
• Cache: stores data and instructions that are used frequently by a computer to process data, so they can be accessed more quickly, thereby maximizing speed. Level 1 (L1), L2 and L3 caches lie between the processor and RAM. L1 cache is small and therefore faster, but if the instructions or data needed aren't there, the processor checks L2, which is larger and retrieval is slower. Lastly, it checks L3 which can be much larger and some slower, but it's still faster than accessing RAM.
• Bus: transports data amongst the processor, memory and other components. It's made up of tinb circuitry called traces printed on both sides of the motherboard. Local bus: a bus that is local to a particular component like the processor or PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect. The PCI bus allows for Plug and Play (PnP) technology, which manages things like interrupts and memory allocation when a new expansion board is added to a PC.

Resources:

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-l3-cache.htm

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-l2-cache.htm

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-cache-memory.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processor_speed#History

http://www.pcworld.com/article/125647-3/how_to_buy_a_laptop.html

http://compreviews.about.com/od/buyers/bb/NotebookPCs.htm

How Computers Work, 6th edition, Ron White, Illustrated by Timothy Edward Downs c2002.

Class #5

I know, I'm a little behind. What can I say, except Dan, I'll catch up as I can. But I want to get these thoughts down while they're fresh.

Tonight we talked about the glorious hexidecimal numeral system. Oddly, the hex system is a more "human friendly representation of binary coded values..." (Wikipedia). So instead of saying that I'm 101101 years old in binary, I can say I'm 2B years old in hex. See...that IS much clearer. Seriously. As Dan explained, the other benefit is that more data is moved more quickly. He analogized: if there's a crowd of 256 people who need to be transported from Salt Lake City to say...Boise, it will happen a lot faster if we transport 16 people at a time in our rock star tour bus instead of 2 people at a time in our Ferari. Personally I'd prefer the Ferari AND I'd want to drive...to Las Vegas. But you get the idea.

In previous classes we've created a Virtual Machine. That basically means I have a whole nother computer (the guest) installed on my laptop (the host) and I can run them both simultaneously. That means 2 versions of Windows XP run at the same time. I learned today that if I mount the CD ROM drive to the guest, it completely takes it over and the host can't use it at all. How rude.

As for the whole user permissions vs. user rights and individual users vs. user groups discussion, that went a little over my head. And we have a paper due on this in 2 days. I heart Wikipedia.

CS1030

So I find myself back in college yet again. Most people have gotten this figured out by now, but no, not me. This semester finds me the only female in a class full of IT professionals, self-educated programmers and home-grown geeks. And this is the "101" class of the Computer Science Associates degree. The instructor endeavors to teach the class at the beginner's level, but nevertheless the discussion always migrates to something entirely beyond my understanding such as the impending release of IPv6 or the merits of and differences between "disk cleanup" and "defraging". It's all "clear as mud" as our instructor likes to say.

One of our assignments is to create a journal of things we learn for each class session, so there you have the purpose for this blog. Nothin fancy. Just my adventures in Geekdom...