PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Software Components

Many people think of a PC as comprising solely physical hardware, but hardware is just a useless pile of silicon, metal, and plastic unless you have software to make it do something. Software is a set of detailed instructions that allow a computer to perform a task or group of tasks. Software is usually categorized as being one of three types:

Applications programs

Applications programs are what most people think of when they hear the word software. These programs are designed to perform specific user-oriented tasks, such as creating a word processing document or spreadsheet, browsing the Web, reading and replying to email, managing your schedule, creating a presentation, or recovering a deleted file. Hundreds of thousands of applications programs are available, from comprehensive office suites such as Microsoft Office, to vertical market packages such as medical office billing software, to single-purpose utilities such as WinZip. Whatever you might want a computer to do for you, you can probably locate applications software that will do it.

Operating system

An operating system is software that manages the PC itself, providing such basic functions as the ability to write and read data from a disk or to display images on the monitor. A PC can run any of dozens of operating systems, including DOS, Windows 95/98/98SE/Me (we use Windows 9X to refer to these collectively throughout the book, and Windows 98 inclusively if we are discussing all versions of Windows ...