Week 2: Clear/Computer Hardware

I have never really put much thought into how computers work. This seems kind of ridiculous to me after I think about how much time I spend on the computer, but after the lectures I watched about computer hardware this week, as many elements as there are to a computer it wasn't that hard to understand. From what I gathered from the lectures, everything begins with the motherboard and the large circuit board inside the computer. Then we go on to the Central Processing Unit which performs most of the computations in the computer system. And from there you can focus and learn about a number of factors: how fast the computer works, the memory, the aspects to take into consideration when buying a computer, etc.

To talk about the ins and outs of the computer can take a very long time, as shown by the amount of information we had to learn this week. However, I never really felt overwhelmed because I found it very easy to understand if you took the concept and just went back to how this impacts the way you can use the computer. This week made me realize that in order to be successful in the business world, you need to know how computers work. So much business is conducted over the internet that to not understand the hardware of how a computer is built, would be silly because you wouldn't be able to work with everything possible.

After the lectures, even though I felt confidant in my understanding of the information, I still wanted to learn more about the way memory works. I found very helpful diagrams here! The labels for input and output devices made the concept clearer to me and the chart with different types of storage was also extremely helpful. I am very happy I decided to take this course because I believe learning how computers work will be extremely important for me to know now and in my future career.