COMPUTER HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

Introduction
A computer is a system, which means a computer is not a  single device. It is made up of several devices and software, In a simple term, we say that computer is made up of two components

• Hardware
• Software

Computer Hardware
computer hardware is the physical parts of the computer that we can touch and see. the Hardware runs the software. It is made up of four units. They are: Input Unit, Central Processing Unit, Out Put unit and Secondary (Auxiliary) Storage unit.


The Input Unit:
the input unit is a set of devices that accept data into the central processing unit (CPU). Examples of input devices are:

keyboard, mouse, joystick, light pen, graphic tablet, touch screen, scanner, trackball, magnetic tapes and cassettes reader, floppy and hard disk drives, Magnetic Ink Character Reader (MICR), Optical Character Reader (OCR), Optical Mark Reader (OMR).

A Keyboard is a type of input device that requires a user to type raw data

A Mouse

is a pointing device. It is called a pointing device because of its "point" and "click" actions on objects. Mouse can also be found in wireless form. Apart from "point" and "click", it is also used for drawing and can dragged to accomplish tasks like copy and
movement of objects from one location on the screen to another.




A joy Stick is also a pointing device commonly used for games.

A track Ball is also a pointing device. It is commonly used in laptop computers. it contains a ball which can rotate in any direction. The point action is achieved by spinning the ball in different directions to point an object, and the "click" is by striking softly on the ball..

Touch Screen technology allow users to operate their computers by simply touching menu options on the sensitized monitors. This technology is also used in Global System for Mobile Communication(GSM).

Scanners are input devices capable of moving information directly into the computer.

MICR: Magnetic Ink Character Reader is connected to the computer so that it will capture special characters written on special cheques onto the computer for processing, Observe some characters like account number or banks identification code.
These data are written with a special magnetic ink so that MICR will be able to read it. The common MICR are: E12B  and  CMC4. They can process about 1200 cheque per minutes. This device saves the time the banker would use in typing characters from the customers' cheques on the computer for processing.