Computer at its basics

Computer hardware is a very vast subject to discuss. To start with it is important to understand the basic processing cycle of a computer.

How computer works?

If you notice this diagram carefully you will notice that you is involved in two layers the blue and the green. This diagram explain the basic usage of computer commonly know as the IPO cycle or the Input Process Output Cycle. The user provides input to the computer through blue layer which consists of devices known as Input Devices. This input could be "2+3" here input says perform addition on 2 and 3. When this instruction is received by the brain of computer i.e. the CPU or Central Processing Unit, it evaluates the problem and generates the result. To pass this result back to the user the devices in green layer are used. These devices are known as Output devices. So the result 5 is either displayed on the screen or printed based on user's request respectively.

So now we are in the right position to define hardware. Hardware are the physical components of the computer which you can touch. Well nothing new in this definition. These hardware components are grouped into several categories. The broader ones you have already seen: Input devices like keyboard, mouse etc. Output devices like Monitor, printer etc. The third and the most complex part of computer hardware is CPU.

Central Processing Unit

Well we won't be digging much into CPU at this time. For now we should take CPU as a processing devices which processes the inputs and generates the output. In other words I evaluates the data given by the user to generate the desired results. This CPU consists of few other components like Memory, Processor etc. We'll be taking these topics individually.

Apart from the above mentioned devices we might also have other devices like microphone (mic), speaker, webcam, CD/DVD player etc. your job is to find which category they belong. Incase of any doubts post a comment. Thats'll for about the basics of hardware. See you later...