Every part of your computer is the result of years of research and development. Parts that were once hand made at a cost of thousands of man-hours are now mass produced for a fraction of a rupee. Computer parts can be divided into two groups, hardware and software.
Hardware is any part of the computer that you can touch. The seeming miles of wires that get tangled on your desk, the CD drive, the monitor are all hardware. Software is a set of electronic instructions consisting of complex codes (Programs) that make the computer perform tasks. Windows is a software, so is any other program that runs on your computer.
While there are thousands of parts even in the smallest computers that make up its hardware, you are not required to know them all. You only need to know about basic computer hardware.
Softwares
. Software not only directs the computer to man-
age its internal resources, but also enables the user to tailor a computer system to
provide specific business value. It is surprising to many people that at the corporate
level, software expenditures (development and purchase) typically are a much larger
cost than is hardware. In this chapter we learn that computer software, in its various
forms and languages, can be quite complex. But these complexities must be under-
stood in order to truly be able to exploit the power of modern information technolo-
gies. This chapter explains to the reader the concepts of what software is, how it
works, and how it is created. Along the way we provide examples of software’s critical
role in maintaining organizational competitiveness.