All this, just $30
Buying Use this book 1 How to shop 10 Chips 20 Disks 25 1/O devices 32 Software 43 Complete systems 56
Windows
Windows 10 & 11 70 Web 100 Email ee Security 123 Maintenance 134 Repairs 136 Command prompt 144
CauthorsS
Handhelds Pure Android 152 Samsung’s Android 157
iPad 181 | _ Tricky living © Health 192 Daily survival 210 Intellectuals pes, Language Piebey
Places 285 Donna’s comments 307
Arts 326 om Math 339
| Comp ufer sc T | icky Living | ome .
Word 444 Excel 460 PowerPoint 471
Computers: start at page |
oe ene Programmin Tricky living: hop to page 192 oe - Easy to read, trains you in many skills, rated “best” ane design aH Praised by NY Times, Wall St. Journal, PC World, rest of world | Challenges 560 Amazing new edition, includes 100,000 improvements seen xotic langua 644 Helps you buy, use, fix, reprogram computers cleverly ae ee 663
Master Windows 10 & 11, Android, iPad, Web Parting
Tricks for health, brains, God, Chinese, love, laughs Computer past 677
Your future 688 Includes the deep©, funny©, sad®, horrible% Resources 697
Free help: call Russ’s cell phone (603-666-6644), 24 hours 34" edition © 2022 Russ Walter, comments by Donna Walter | See pages 3 & 697-703
Thanks for picking up this book. I appreciate the lift.
Unique
This is the only book whose author is weird enough to try to reveal everything important about computers — and also tricky living — all in one book. You can learn part of this info yourself, without this book, by just asking weird friends & experimenting & sloshing through the Internet’s drivel, but reading this book will save you lots of time and teach you tricks you can’t find elsewhere. You can also call the author’s cell phone, 603-666-6644, for free help, day or night. He’s usually available. He’s me. Go ahead: bug me now!
Earlier editions were rated “the best,” praised by The New York Times and thousands of other major newspapers, magazines, and gurus worldwide, in many countries; but this 34% edition is even better! It adds the world’s newest erap achievements: Windows 11, Trump’s downfall, and other fantastic goodies/baddies: over 100,000 updates! It explains clearly, without wasting your time:
How to buy computers & smartphones smartly
How to use modern Windows, iPads, and Androids pleasantly How to use the Internet, email, Microsoft Office, and more, beyond competence
How to write programs in many computer languages, to launch your career
Everything important about life, beginning with health, ending with sex, and getting intellectual & artistic along the way, with survival tips and candid chat about the no-no’s (religions, politics, and international cultures)
No other book comes close.
Hop Hop to whatever topic you like. Page 3 shows them all. Tricky Living begins on page 192 and often gets bizarre. Sex jokes hide on pages 435-443, higher than kids can count.
Free phone help
Whenever you have a question about computers or anything else in your life, call me, Russ, on my cell phone, 603-666-6644, for free help. Yeah, call day or night, around the clock, 24 hours. I’m usually available, and I sleep just lightly.
[ve answered hundreds of thousands of phone calls about computers (how to buy, use, fix, and program them), careers, and the rest of life (health, dating, other relationships, schools, math, English writing, foreign cultures, God, and beyond).
I answer most questions directly. If your question’s too tricky for a quick answer, I'll teach you how to find the answer yourself and which people & resources to use. Try me. I’m free.
When you phone, begin by saying your name, city, how you got my number (“from the 34 edition”), and your question’s one-sentence summary. Then we’ll have a pleasant chat — unless I’m in the middle of another call or meeting, in which case I’1l call you back free!
I occasionally travel to other countries, to learn better to think non-American. During those jaunts I might be harder to reach.
We must follow these rules:
For help about your computer, phone when you're at the computer. For help with your career or life, sob before calling, then tell me what to analyze.
To handle many calls each day while juggling other responsibilities, I must keep the average call to 7 minutes but sometimes go longer. You can call often.
Ifthe answer’s in this book, I’! tell you the page but you must read it yourself.
I can’t help you do baddies (such as taking illegal drugs, using pirated software, or bombing the USA).
If you’re a kid, get your parents’ permission to phone.
Ears
I wish everything in this book were 100% true, but computers & the world change faster than any human can write, so you'll
occasionally bump into a paragraph that’s outdated or otherwise ill-advised, for which I humbly apologize, o master! I’m your slave. Phone me anytime at 603-666-6644 to whip me into improving. I’m all ears, to improve my tongue.
Come visit
When you visit New Hampshire, drop in & use my library, free, anytime, day or night! In case I’m having an orgy with my 50 computers, phone first to pick a time when we’re cooled down.
Visit SecretFun.com. It reveals any hot news about us, gives you useful links, and lets you read parts of this book online, free.
I read all email sent to Russ@SecretFun.com. | guarantee to reply, but just by phone, so then phone me at 603-666-6644.
Mail the coupon Mail us the coupon on this book’s last page. It gets you our free Secret Brochure, plus discounts on extra copies of this edition and other editions.
Love your librarian These details will save your librarian from getting fired.
Title: Secret Guide to Computers & Tricky Living, 34" edition Author & publisher: Russ Walter at 603-666-6644 (24 hours, usually in) this is the top-rated book about computers & life March 2022 by Russ Walter
Rating: Copywrong: ISBN: Internat. Standard Book Number is 978-0-939151-54-7 Street address: 196 Tiffany Lane, Manchester NH 03104-4782 Internet addresses: SecretFun.com, Russ@SecretFun.com
Elfish fun
I wrote most of this book myself, but over the years I’ve been helped by many elves, especially these:
My wife (Donna Walter) wrote the “Donna’s comments” section.
Useful tidbits came from Irene Vassos, Len Pallazola, and Lili Timmons. Priscilla Grogan and Kira Barnum slavishly helped me for many years. Thousands of readers told me how to improve earlier editions.
Family & friends supported me when life got yukky.
Dont read this
My editor told me to put this stuff in. You don’t have to read it.
Dedication | dedicate this book to the computer, without whom I’d be unemployed.
Acknowledgment |’d like to thank:
my many friends (whose names I’ve gladly forgotten) my students (who naturally aren’t my friends)
my word processor (which has a mind of its own)
all others who helped make this book impossible
I’d especially like to thank:
God (for influencing this book somehow) Satan (for torturing me to write this book) Bill Gates (for making software confusing, so I get paid to explain it)
Adolph Hitler (for making my dad flee Germany and meet my mom) Donald Trump (for making the world bad enough to be worth writing about) buyers of previous editions (for supporting this dying voice)
Prerequisite Before reading this book, you must pass this test: count to ten but (here’s the catch!) without looking at your fingers. To remove the temptation, cut them off.
What this book will do for you It’\l make you even richer than the author! Alas, he’s broke.
Apology Any original ideas in this book are errors.
Copyright Copying this book is all right! Make as many copies as you like, and don’t pay us a cent. Just follow the “free reprints” instructions on page 9.
Forward because it’s too late to turn back.
Buying: use this book 1
What's in this book?
Feast your eyes on the massive table of contents, splashed across the next page. It reveals that the Guide includes all 7 parts of computer life:
Buying: Windows: Handhelds:
how to buy great computers and smartphones, cheaply how to use Windows to handle life & the Internet
how to use tablets and smartphones
Tricky living: life beyond computers, from the practical to the naughty Office: how to use Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) Programming: how to program in Basic, Python, JavaScript, C#, and beyond Parting: our past, your future, and what to do next
Have fun:
Hardware details too hard to understand? Get electrified, starting on page 10. Wanna buy modern computers? Their wrestling match starts on page 56. Windows gotcha worried? Get your brain untangled, starting on page 70. Oh-oh! Problems with security, maintenance, repairs? Fixes start on page 123. Got an Android thingy but feel dumb about its details? Undumb on page 152. Got an Apple thingy instead? Undumb, starting on page 181.
Scared about your health & how you’ll die? Page 192 starts your glow. Talk real intellectual-like by taking the hey-hey hayride bumps from page 229. Up your language, in English & beyond, using tricks from page 239.
So many wild places in the USA and beyond! Visit them on page 285. Become an artiste without being teased? Emoting starts on page 326. Political elephants & donkeys both emit piles of shit. Savor them on page 372. Oh no! Trump? Then Biden? Their rise and pratfalls start on page 379.
Make fun of lawyers before they make funk of you? Giggles start on page 395. War ain’t bad, it’s fun — at least according to page 397.
Being good can be fun. So can evil. They start on 413.
Want sex? It starts on page 435.
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint giving you hell? Make heaven on page 444. Learn not just one but a// popular programming languages, starting on page 477.
Buying
The buying section gives you tricks to use this book then explains how to shop for a computer. It covers all popular computers: the towers, all-in-ones, notebook computers, tablets, and smartphones. It teaches you hardware & software jargon, reveals lots of dirt about the companies, and tells you how to get the best deals. It turns you into a German nun, who knows the difference between what’s blessed and what’s wurst.
It analyzes each of the computer’s parts (the chips, disks, I/O devices, and software) and reveals the best way to buy complete systems.
Windows
The Windows section explains how to use the newest Windows (Windows 10 & 11).
It explains how to make Windows access the Internet (the Web and e-mail), using all the popular Web browsers (Edge, Internet Explorer, and Chrome) and email programs (Windows 10 Mail, Windows Live Mail, Yahoo Mail, and Gmail).
It explains how to protect your computer’s security, make your computer run better (by doing maintenance and repairs), and give it advanced commands (using the command prompt, which lets you give sneaky DOS commands).
Handhelds
The handhelds section explains how to use popular tablets & smartphones.
It begins by explaining the best system (Android) in its 2 good forms (pure Android and Samsung’s Android) and Apple’s most reasonable alternative (the iPad).
2 Buying: use this book
Tricky living
There’s more to life than just computers! The tricky living section explains everything beyond computers.
It begins on page 192. It digs into health (nutrition, exercise, maladies, and funny doctors), daily survival (housing, transportation, and money), intellectuals (educators, researchers, and scientists), language (how to write crazily well in English, plus how other languages differ), places (what’s crazy in the USA, Canada, and China), Donna’s comments (about the Chinese and crazy Americans), arts (painting, music, movies, and writing, all created by humans or computers), math (its methods, culture, and ridiculousness), government (politics, economy, law, war, and police secrets), morals (ethics, prejudice, and religions), and sex (its laughs & groans).
Its candid discussions of politics, religion, and sexual relations include comments from both sides of the aisle. If you’re a parent who wants to shelter
your kids from controversies, review this material before handing it to your kids; but it’s milder than what’s on TV and in high-school chitchat.
Office
The Office section explains how to use Microsoft Office’s 3 best parts: Word (for word processing), Excel (for spreadsheets), and PowerPoint (for slide shows).
Programming
Our world is split into 3 classes of people:
avoiders
(who fear and loathe computers and avoid them) users (who use computers but don’t really understand them) programmers (who understand computers and can teach them new tricks)
The Guide elevates your mind to the heights of class 3: it turns you into a sophisticated programmer.
To program the computer, you feed it instructions written in a computer language, which is a small part of English. The Guide’s programming section explains all the popular computer languages & techniques.
It begins on page 477. It explains fundamental programming (using Basic and Python), applied programming (to Web-page design and_ challenges), and Visual programming (Visual Basic and Visual C#). It compares oodles of other exotic languages and gives you the history of them all. For the grand finale, you learn about programming in assembler.
Parting
The parting section is such sweet sorrow. It explains how the computer industry arose (computer past) and how to raise yourself (your future). It gives you helpful resources (an index and Secret Guide coupons).
Excuses from the editor, me!
Punctuation Previous editions wrote “e-mail”; but English gradually drops hyphens, so this edition shows the new style: “email.” I still capitalize “Internet” & “Web,” even though most news reporters have become too lazy to capitalize. The Tricky Living section obeys tradition: it puts the period (to end a sentence) inside any quotation marks; but computer sections, when quoting a word or phrase, put the period after the closing quotation mark, to indicate the period isn’t part of what I’m quoting; same for commas.
Footnotes Are you an assoholic professor who gripes I have no footnotes? Note the two feet at the next page’s bottom. They’re my footnotes for “Government.”
Use this book What’s in this book? Praised by reviewers Fan mail Who’s the author? Special services
How to shop Kinds of computers The 3 wares Form factors Networks Manufacturers Prices drop Subculture Parts Dealing with dealers
Chips Chip technology RAM ROM, PROM, flash CPU
Disks Floppy disks Hard disks CD DVD
I/O devices Screens Keyboards Pointing devices Sound Printers
Software Operating systems Languages Internet Apps Data Software companies Buying software
54
Complete systems 56 IBM’s early computers 56
Search for perfection
58
Best Buy, Staples, others 58
Brands
Acer Other IBM clones Apple
Windows 10 &11 70
Variants 70 Fundamentals 71 Tiles we love 715 WordPad 79 Notepad 89 Paint 89 Nifty features 93 Explore your computer 95 Manipulate a file 96 Settings 98 Start-right menu 99 Web 100 How the Internet arose100 Modern providers 102 Browser choices 104 Prepare yourself 104 Get your browser 104 Start browsing 104 2 ways to search 107 Best sites 109 Hassles 115
Email 117 Simple email 117 Attachments 121 Multiple people 122
Security 123 Back up your work —=:123
Protect your hardware 123 Send email cautiously 124 Beware of evil email 124 Viruses 126 Maintenance 134 Clean your hardware 134
Clean your software 135 Repairs 136 Strategies for repair 136 Booting problems 137 Windows problems 139 Mouse problems 140 Keyboard problems 141 Internet problems 142 Printer problems 142 No sound 143
Command prompt 144 See command prompt 144
Simple commands 144 Edit your drives 149 Batch files 151 Help 151
Handhelds
Pure Android 152 Versions 152 Starting 152 Phone calls 157 Cameras 159 Internet 161 Alarm clock 164 Play Store 165 Customize 166 Further help 166
Samsung's Android167 Starting 167 Notes 171 Phone calls 173 Cameras 175 Internet 176 Alarm clock 178 Play Store 179 Customize 179 Further help 180
iPad 181 Starting 181 Notes 183 Calendar 184 Reminders 185 Cameras 185 Internet 186 Apple ID 188 Settings 191 Further help 191
Health 192 Nutrition 192 Sleep 202 AIDS 204 Death 205 Cleaning 207 Doctors 208
Daily survival 210 Housing 210 Lawns 211 Snow removal 212 Transportation 213 Finances 215 Careers 218 Management 220 Holidays 222 Aging 224 Loss 227 Useless searches 227 Crooks 227
Intellectuals 229 Professors 229 Philosophers 230 Psychologists 231 Chemists 236 Physicists 238
Language 239 How to write 239 Quick wits 244 Weird writing 246 Quora chat 256 English dialects 268 Languages compared 272 German 276 Spanish 276 French 278 Japanese 279 Chinese 280
Places 285 U.S. versus world 285 Prof. Pfumpfernichel 286 Geography 287 Vermont 287 New Hampshire 288 Boston 291 New York City 294 Canada 295 China 295
Donna’s comments307 East versus West 310 I don’t recognize China 313 American helping hands 326 Tricky languages 326 Chinese way to succeed327
Arts 326 Monk-Penn art 326 Picasso’s advice 326 Stoppard’s rebuke 326 Comedy’s 2 skills 326 Music 327 Movies 335
Math 339 Funny math 339 Emotional integers 344 Famous irrationals 357 Look closely 362 No bell prize 364 Formal algebra 369
Government 372
Political philosophies 372 Presidents we’ve had 377
2016 election 379 2020 election 390 Biden’s Presidency 392 Economic policy 394 Law 395 War 397
Citizens Police Academy 400
Morals
Ethics Prejudice
Evil
Christian fun Judaism
Old Testament
New Testament
Quran
Sex Search for pleasure Men versus women
Fun
Variables
Input
Going & stopping
Conditions
For...next
Data...read
Helpful hints
Advanced tricks Pretty output
Fancy calculations
Subscripts Proc Style
Python
Fun
Variables Input
If
Loops
Data structures
413 413 414 416 AI7 421 428 429 434
435 435 438
Microsoft Office
Word 44 Versions of Word 444 Fun 444 File-office button 448 Groups 449
Font group 449 Select text 450 Clipboard group 450 Paragraph group = 451 Styles group 452 Editing group 453 Tab bar 454 Help 459
Excel 460 What to do 460 Hop far 462 Adjust rows & columns 463 Move 464 Copy 464 After you’ve finished 466 Beautify your cells 467 Sort 469 Chart 469
PowerPoint 471 Launch PowerPoint 471 Type your outline 471 View different slides 472 Design 472 Font Size 473 Watch the show 473 Save 474 Finish 474 Advanced features 474 Puppets 476
Basic
477
Web-page design 544 Angelfire 544 HTML 545 Create your own .com 552
CSS 553 JavaScript 554 Challenges 560 Computer art 560 Board games 568 Adventure games 570 Psychotherapy 573 Fall in love 576 Replace people 579 Be poetic 582 Analyze writing 586
Artificial intelligence 587
Visual Basic 594 Fun 595 Variables 599 Pop-up boxes 600 Controlcommands 602 Property list 605 Toolbox 607 Helpful hints 616 Tricky programming 616
Places for output 616 Menu 619 Word processor 620 Loops 621 Special numbers 624 Fancy calculations 624 Types of data 626 Random numbers 631
Visual C# 634 Fun 634 Math 635 Variables 636 Logic 638 Windows forms 643
Exotic languages 644 Mainstream languages 645
Radicals 656 Specialists 660 Assembler 663 Number systems 663 Character codes 665 Sexy assembler 666 Inside the CPU 671 Intel’s details 675
Computer past 677 Ancient history 677 Micro history 680 Rise & fall 682 Cycles 686 Events 687
Your future 688 Become an expert 688 Computer careers 688
Change your personality 692
Teach your kids 693 Avoid dangers 694 Share our knowledge 696 Resources 697 Index 697 Coupon for friends 702 Coupon for you 703
Buying: use this book 3
Praised by reviewers
If you like this book, you’re not alone.
Praised by computer magazines
All the famous computer magazines have called Russ Walter the “computer guru” and praise him for giving free consulting even in the middle of the night. Here’s how they evaluated The Secret Guide to Computers.
Compute “Russ is an industry leader.”
Interface Age “The Guide is a best buy.” Microcomputing “Plan ahead; get the Secret now.” €nter “It’s the best book about computer languages.” Eighty Micro “Theatrical, madcap Russ is a cult hero.”
Mac _ User “It’s an everything-under-one-roof computer technology guide.”
Computer Bargain Info “The Guide is widely acclaimed by experts as brilliant.”
Cider Press “The Guide should be given to all beginners with the purchase of their computers.”
Softalk “The Guide fires well-deserved salvos at many sacred cows. It’s long been a cult hit.”
Computerworld “The Guide by unconventional computer guru Russ is informative, entertaining.”
Computer Shopper “The Guide covers the entire spectrum. It’s incredibly informative and amusing.”
Creative Computing “The Guide is fascinating, easy to understand, an excellent book at a ridiculously low price. We especially endorse it.”
{nfoworld “Russ is recognized and respected in many parts of the country as a knowledgeable, effective instructor. His Guide is readable & outrageous and includes a wealth of info.”
Byte “The Guide is amazing. If you’ve had difficulty understanding computers, or must teach other people about computers, or just want to read a good computer book, get the Guide.”
PC_World “Russ is a PC pioneer, a trailblazer, the user’s champion. Nobody does a more thorough, practical, and entertaining job of teaching PC technology. It’s a generous compendium of industry gossip, buying advice, and detailed, foolproof tutorials — a wonderful bargain.”
Personal Computing “The Guide is bulging with information. You’ ll enjoy it. Russ’s approach to text-writing sets anew style that other authors might do well to follow. It’s readable, instructive, and downright entertaining. If more college texts were written in his style, more college students would graduate.”
Christian Computing Magazine “The Guide is the
most comprehensive reference in the industry. What planet is Russ from? It must be populated with nice people. You'll learn more from his Guide than from any 10 computer books you’ve ever read. To say this book is ‘comprehensive’ is a staggering understatement: nothing else in the industry even comes close. It’s worth triple what Russ charges for it.”
Popular Computing “Russ is king of the East Coast computer cognoscenti. His Guide is the biggest bargain in
computer tutorials in our hemisphere. If CBS ever decides to replace Andy Rooney with a ‘60 Minutes’ computer pundit,
4 Buying: use this book
they’d need to look no further than Russ. His wry observations enliven his book. His Guide is the first collection of computer writings that one might dare call literature.”
PE Magazine “The Guide explains the computer industry, hardware, languages, operating systems, and applications in a knowledgeable, amusing fashion. It includes Russ’s unbiased view of the successes & failures of various companies, replete with inside gossip. By reading it, youll know more than many who make their living with PCs. Whether novice or expert, you’ ll learn from it and have a good time doing so. No other computer book is a better value.”
Computer Currents “Your computer literacy will come up short unless you know something about Russ. He’s a folk hero. He knows virtually everything about personal computers and makes learning about them fun. If you’ve given up in disgust and dismay at reading other computer books, get the Guide. It should be next to every PC in the country. PC vendors would do themselves and their customers a big favor by packing a copy of the Guide with every computer that goes out the door. The Guide deserves the very highest recommendation.”
Praised by financial magazines
Financial magazines love how the Guide helps accountants master computers.
Barron’s “Russ is an expert who answers questions for free and has been inundated by calls.”
Kiplinger’s Personal Finance “Russ is a computer whiz whose mission is to educate people about computers. He lets strangers call him in the middle of the night for help with diagnosing a sick computer. His Guide covers all you ever wanted to know.”
Abacus “Russ provides the best current treatment of programming languages. It’s irreverent, like the underground books of the 1960’s. It’s simple to read, fast-paced, surprisingly complete, full of locker-room computer gossip, and loaded with examples.”
Praised by wild magazines
Magazines that go beyond computers love how the Guide goes beyond nerds.
Esquire “The handy Guide contains lots of fact & opinion untainted by bias.”
Omni “Guru Russ sympathizes deeply with people facing a system crash at midnight, so he broadcasts his home phone number and answers calls by the light of his computers, cursors winking. He’s considered an excellent teacher. His Guide is utterly comprehensive.”
The Whole Earth Catalog (in its “Coevolution Quarterly”) “The personal-computer subculture was noted for its fierce honesty in its early years. The Guide is one of the few intro books to continue that tradition and the only intro survey of equipment that’s kept up to date. Russ jokes, bitches, enthuses, condemns, and charms. The book tells the bald truth in comprehensible language.”
Scientific American “The Guide is irresistible. Every step leads to a useful result. Russ’s candor shines; he clarifies the faults & foibles others ignore or are vague about. The effect is that of a private chat with a friend who knows the inside story. It reads like a talented disc jockey’s patter: it’s flip, self- deprecatory, randy, and good-humored. His useful frank content & coherent style are unique. He includes first-rate advice. No room with a small computer and an adult beginner is well equipped without the Guide.”
Praised by librarians
Librarians have called the Guide the best computer book ever written.
BookLovers Feview “It’s the best computer intro you can buy, a miracle, a must-have tutorial & reference.”
Wilson Library Bulletin “The Guide is distinguished by its blend of clarity, organization, and humor. It cuts through the techno-haze. It packs more simple, fresh explication per page than anything else available.”
School Library Journal “The Guide is a gold mine of information. It’s crystal clear, while at the same time Russ delivers a laugh a paragraph along with a lot of excellent info. It’s accessible even to kids, who’ll love its loony humor. Buy it; you’ ll like it.”
Net BookWatch“Many experts around the world agree this is the best single intro to computers. It’s well organized, easy to understand, comprehensive, interesting, updated. Complex subjects are explained expertly. Every paragraph is easy to understand. With Russ as your guide, learning about hardware, software, and the Internet becomes pure fun. The Guide is essential reading for beginners and professionals.”
Praised by computer societies
Computer societies, in their newsletters, newspapers, and magazines, have called the Guide the best computer book.
Tucson (Arizona) Computer Society “Wonderful
stuff! Recommended. Very well done.”
New England Computer Society “Russ is considered
one of the few true computer gurus. His Guide is the world’s best tutorial, the best present for anyone who wants to learn about computers without going crazy.”
Boston Computer Society “The Guide is cleverly graduated, outrageous, funny. Russ turns computerese into plain speaking while making you giggle. He’s years ahead of the pack instructing computer novices. His unique mix of zany humor & step-by-step instruction avoids the mistakes of manuals trying to follow his lead.”
Sacramento (California) PC Users Group “The Guide is the best collection of computer help ever written. It includes just about everything you’d want to know about computers. You’ ll find answers for all the questions you thought of and some you didn’t think of. No holds barred, Russ even tells you who in the industry made the mistakes & rotten computers and who succeeded in spite of themselves. The Guide is fascinating.”
New York’s “NYPC~ “The Guide is the perfect book for any computer beginner because it covers a range of subjects otherwise requiring a whole reference library. It’s even better for the experienced computer user, since it includes many advanced concepts, which one person could hardly remember. But one person apparently remembered them all: Russ. He’s a fountain of computer knowledge and can even explain it in words of one syllable. His Guide reads like a novel: you can read simply for fun. It’s recommended to anyone from rank beginner to seasoned power user.”
Connecticut Computer Society “Russ’s books have
been used by insiders for years. He’s a special teacher because of 3 factors: his comprehensive knowledge of many computer topics, his ability to break complicated processes into the smallest components, and his humor. The Guide includes his valuable, candid comments about various computers & software. He’s one of the few people able to review languages, machines, and software, all in a humorous, clear manner, with the whole endeavor set off by his sense of industry perspective, history, and culture. If you’re ever struck with a computer problem, give him a call.”
Texas's “Golden Triangle PC Club” “Buy this book! You’ll be glad! The marvelous Guide explains just about all computer topics in a way anyone can understand. In these days of having to use voice mail or email to reach tech support, it’s amazing you can call Russ for help and he’Il actually talk with you when you call. This book gives you extreme value for minimal cost. Russ is famous for his comprehensive knowledge of computers, his ability to simplify complicated processes, and his wry wit. Reading the Guide’s a joy. He translates highly technical material into easily understandable language. He’s the finest example of the preeminent computer professional. He’s condensed so much material, in a way that never seems disorganized or cluttered. Anyone working with or interested in computers will find this book a must-have. The Guide stands above the crowd of computer books that just can’t compete.”
Praised by U.5. newspapers
The Guide’s been praised by newspapers across the USA. New Hampshire's “Hippo” “Very impressive.”
Boston Phoenix “Russ has achieved international cult status. He knows his stuff, and his comprehensive Guide’s a great deal.”
Chicago Tribune “The Guide is the best computer book. It’s a cornucopia of computer delights written by Russ, a great altruist & dreamer.”
Boston Globe “Russ is a unique resource, important to beginning and advanced users. His Guide is practical, down-to- earth, easy to read.”
Philadelphia_Inquirer “Russ is the Ann Landers for computer klutzes, a high-tech hero. His wacky, massive Guide is filled with his folksy wit.”
Dallas Times Herald “Easily the best beginners’ book seen, it’s not just for beginners. Its strength is how simple it makes everything, without sacrificing what matters.”
Wall_ Street Journal “Russ is a computer expert, a guru who doesn’t mind phone calls. He brings religious-like fervor to the digital world. His students are grateful. His Guide gets good reviews. He’s influential.”
Kentucky’ “Louisville Courier” “Russ’s Guide will teach you more computer fundamentals than the typical bookstore’s thick books. The Guide gives his no-bull insights. The Guide’s biggest appeal is its humor, wit, personality.”
New_York Times “The computer-obsessed will revel in Russ’s Guide. He covers just about every subject in the microcomputer universe. It’s unlikely you have a question his book doesn’t answer.”
New Jerseys “Asbury Park Press” “Most computer books, especially the good ones, are expensive — except the best one. The best computer book is the Guide. It’s the only book that covers just about everything in computers.”
Buying: use this book 5
Silicon Valleys “Times Tribune™ “The Guide invites
you to throw aside all rules of conventional texts and plunge into the computer world naked & unafraid. This book makes learning not just fun but hilarious, inspiring, addicting.”
Connecticut's “Hartford Courant’ “If you plan to buy a personal computer, the best gift for yourself is the Guide. It’s crammed with info. It became an instant success as one of the few microcomputer books that was not only understandable & inexpensive but also witty — a combo still too rare today.”
Detroit News “Russ is a legendary teacher. His fiercely honest Guide packs an incredible amount of info. It’s the only book that includes all. He gives you all the dirt about the companies and their hardware, evaluates their business practices, and exposes problems they try to hide. Phone him; you’ll always get a truthful answer.”
Florida’s “Hometown News” The Guide is thoroughly entertaining. It brings intimidating tech issues down to everyday language. And boy, does it cover the topics! Everything from old systems to new modern workhorses is hit upon. If you’re looking for a book that touches on just about every aspect of computers and is easy to read, the Guide’s for you.”
Praised by overseas newspapers The Guide’s been praised by newspapers beyond the USA.
The Australian “The Guide’s coverage of programming is intelligent, urbane, extremely funny, full of great ideas.”
Englands “Manchester Guardian” “Russ is a
welcome relief. The internationally renowned computer guru tries to keep computerdom’s honesty alive. His Guide’s an extraordinary source of info.”
Australia’s “Sydney Morning Herald” “The Guide is the best computer intro published anywhere in the world. It gives a total overview of personal computers. It’s stimulating, educational, provocative, a damn good read.”
6 Buying: use this book
From our readers, we’ve received thousands of letters and phone calls, praising us. Here are examples.
Intoxicated Our books make readers go nuts. Sex “Great book. Better than sex.” (Worcester, Massachusetts)
Devil “This book is great. It soars with the eagles and dances with the devil.” (Chicago)
Get high“! high! Not on marijuana, crack, or cocaine, but on what I did at my computer with your Guide.” (Beverly, Massachusetts)
Computer dreams “Wow — | loved your book. My husband says I talk about computers in my sleep.” (Los Altos Hills, California)
Strange laughs “I enjoy the Guide immensely! My fellow workers think I’m strange because of all my laughing while reading it. Whenever I feel tired or bored, I pick up the Guide. It’s very refreshing!” (Acton, Massachusetts)
Bedtime story “The book’s next to the bed, where my wife and I see who grabs it first. The loser must find something else to do, which often seriously degrades reading comprehension.” (Danville, New Hampshire)
Poo - poo“ finished the book at 2:30 AM and had to sit down and send you a big THANK-YOU-poo. A poet I am not, crazy I was not, until I started 18 months ago with this computer and then came poo who sealed my lot.” (Hinesville, Georgia)
Beginners
Even beginners can master the Guide.
Face - off*1 used to be an idiot. Now I can stare my computer in the face. Thanks.” (San Antonio, Texas)
Godsend “You’re a godsend. You saved me from being bamboozled by the local computer store.” (Boston)
Saint “You should be canonized for bringing clarity and humor to a field often incomprehensible and dull.” (Houston)
Computer disease “| was scared to go near a computer. I thought I might catch something. Now I can’t wait.” (Paterson, New Jersey)
Amaze_the_ professor “I love the Guide! I’ve read it
before taking a programming course, and I amaze my professor with my secret skills!” (Olney, Illinois)
Granny’ clammy “I’m a 58-year-old grandma. My daughter gave me a PC. After weeks of frustration I got your Guide. Now I’m happy as a clam at high tide, eager to learn more & more. Wow!” (Seattle)
Bury the Book of Songs “This is the microcomputer book that should be buried in a time capsule for future archaeologists. By reading it, ’ ve made my computer sing. My wife recognizes the melodies and wants to read the book.” (Park Forest, Illinois)
Experts Experts love the Guide.
Research center “Our research center uses and misuses gigabytes of computers. The Guide will improve our use/misuse ratio.” (Naperville, Illinois)
PC Week reporter “1 write for PC Week and think the Guide is the best book of its kind. I’m sending a copy to my little brother, who’s a budding byte-head.” (Boston)
Diehard consultant “It’s really neat! I’ve been a computer consultant for many years, and when your book came yesterday I couldn’t put it down.” (Cleveland Heights, Ohio)
Math_professor “I’m a math professor. The Guide’s the best way in the universe to keep up to date with computers. People don’t have to read anything else — it’s all there.” (New York City)
Careers The Guide’s propelled many careers.
Land _ a top job “Thanks to the Guide, I got an excellent job guiding the selection of computers in a department of over 250 users!” (New York City)
Land a first job “Last month, I bought your Guide. I’ve never seen so much info, packed so densely, in so entertaining a read. I was just offered a computer job, thanks to a presentation based on your Guide. I’m very, very, very happy I bought your book.” (San Francisco)
Consultant's dream “Inspired by your book, your love for computers, and your burning desire to show the world that computers are fun and easily accessible, I entered the computer field. Now I’m a computer consultant. Your ideas come from the heart. Thanks for following your dream.” (Skokie, Illinois)
Found Wall Street “8 years ago, I took your intro programming course. Now I run the computer department of a Wall Street brokerage firm. I’m responsible for 30 people and millions of dollars of computer equipment. The Guide’s always been my foremost reference. Thank you for the key to wonderful new worlds.” (Long Beach, New York)
Kid who grew up “Years ago, I saw you sell books while
wearing a wizard’s cap. I bought a book and was as impressed as a 16-year-old could be. Now I’ve earned B.A.’s in Computer Science and English, and I’m contemplating teaching computers to high school students. I can think of no better way to plan a course outline than around your Guide.” (Pennington, New Jersey)
Better late than never Readers wish they’d found the Guide sooner.
! year “| learned more from the Guide than from a year in the computer industry.” (Redwood City, California)
Prince Charming arrives “Where have you been all my life? I wish I’d heard of your Guide long ago. I’d have made far
fewer mistakes if it had been here alongside my computer.” (White Stone, Virginia)
5 years “|’ve fumbled for 5 years with computers and many books, all with short-lived flashes of enthusiasm, until I found your Guide. It’s the first book that showed a light at the end of the tunnel, even for one as dull-brained as I.” (Boise)
!7_years “Though in a computer company for 17 years, I didn’t learn anything about computers until I began reading the Guide. I love it! I always thought computer people were generically boring, but your book’s changed my mind.” (Hopkinton, Massachusetts)
Hacker “Great book. I’m 14 and always wanted to hack. Thanks to your Guide, I laughed myself to death and look forward to gutting my computer. Yours is the friendliest, funniest book on computers I’ve seen. If I’d started out with the Guide, I’d have saved 5 years of fooling around in the dark.” (Northport, Alabama)
Pass -alongs Readers pass the Guide to their friends.
Squabble with Dad “I love the Guide. Dad & I squabble over our only copy. Send a second so I can finish the Guide in peace.” (New York City)
Kound the office “Send 150 books. I passed my Guide around the office, and just about everyone who saw it wants copies.” (Middleburg Heights, Ohio)
Advancing secretary “I’m ordering an extra copy for my secretary, to start her on the path to a higher paying and better regarded position.” (Belleville, Illinois)
Round the house “Dad bought your Guide to help him understand my computer. It’s become the most widely read book in our house. We love it!” (Boca Raton, Florida)
Coordinating the coordinators “Your book is amazing!
I’m telling the other 50 PC coordinators in my company to be sure they’re in on the secret. Bless you for your magnanimous philosophy!” (Morristown, New Jersey)
Make your guru giggle“! showed the Guide to my guru. Between laughs, chuckles, and guffaws, he agreed to use it to teach his high-school computer class. He even admitted he’d learned something, and that’s the most unheard of thing I ever heard of.” (Arivaca, Arizona)
Hide your secrets “| thought the Guide marvelous and proudly displayed it on my desk. A friend from South Africa saw it and said our friendship depended on letting her take it home with her. What could I do? You’ve gone international. I’m ordering another copy. Should I hide the book this time?” (Cinnaminson, New Jersey)
Cries and anger “| made the mistake of letting several friends borrow my copy of the Guide. Each time I tried getting it back, it was a battle. (I hate to see grown people cry.) I promised to order them copies of their own. I delayed several months, and now I’ve got an angry mob outside my door. While you process my order, I’ll try pacifying them by reading aloud.” (Winston- Salem, North Carolina)
Compared with other publishers The Guide’s better than any other book.
Fip - off“If you can break even at your book’s low price, lots of guys are ripping us off.” (Choctaw, Oklahoma)
Better than 10“1 learned more from your Guide than from a total of 10 books read previously.” (Honolulu)
No_big bucks “Your book is great! Its crazy style really keeps the pages turning. I appreciate someone who doesn’t try to make big bucks off someone trying to learn. Thanks.” (Vancouver, Washington)
Buying: use this book 7
Who's the author?
This section reveals who wrote this book — even if you’d rather not know.
Interview with Russ In this interview, Russ explains what’s behind this book.
Why did you write the Secret Guide? | saw my students trying too hard to take notes, so I made my own notes to hand them. Over the years, my notes got longer. For each new edition, I try harder to make it the kind of book I wish I had when Iwas a student.
What does the Guide cover? Everything about computers and life. Every topic is touched on; the most important topics are covered in depth.
Who reads the Guide? All sorts. Kids read it because it’s easy; professionals read it because it contains secret tidbits you can’t find elsewhere.
Why do you charge so little? \’m not trying to profit. I’m just trying to make people happy — by charging as little as possible, while still covering expenses. Instead of “charging as much as the market will bear,” I try to “charge so little the people will cheer.”
Do you really answer the phone 24 hours? When do you sleep?| sleep by my cell phone. When folks call in the middle of the night, I wake up, answer their questions, then go back to snooze. If you get my voice mail, I’m in a meeting but will try to call you back within an hour.
Why do you give phone help free? Are you a
masochist a saint or a nut?| give free help for 3 reasons: to be nice, keep in touch with readers (who suggest improvements), and please callers enough so they’ll tell their friends about me (so I don’t have to advertise).
At computer shows, you appeared as a witch?\
like to wear a witch’s black hat and red kimono over a monk’s habit and roller skates, with my white gloves caressing an Afro spear. It’s fun.
What's your background? | got degrees in math & education from Dartmouth & Harvard, taught at many colleges (Wellesley, Wesleyan, Northeastern, and beyond), and was a founding editor of Personal Computing magazine. But most of my expertise comes from spending many hours every day reading books, magazines, newspapers, and Internet articles, discussing computer lifestyle questions on the phone, and analyzing life.
About the so-called author
Since the author is so lifeless, we can keep his bio short.
Birth of a notion The author, Russy-poo, was conceived in 1946. So was the modern (“‘stored-program’’) computer.
9 months later, Russy-poo was hatched. The modern computer took a few years longer, so Russ gota head start. But the computer quickly caught up. Ever since, they’ve been racing against each other, to see who’s smartest.
The race is close, because Russ and the computer have a lot in common. Folks say the computer “acts human” and say Russ’s personality is “as a dead as a computer.”
Junior Jews Russ resembles a computer in many ways. For example, both are Jewish.
The modern computer was fathered by John von Neumann, a Jew of German descent. After living in Hungary, he fled the Nazis
8 Buying: use this book
and became a famous U.S. mathematician.
Russ’s father was Henry Walter, a German Jew who fled the Nazis and became a famous U.S. dental salesman. To dentists, he sold teeth, dental chairs, and balloons to amuse kids.
The race for brains To try outsmarting the computer, Russ got his bachelor’s degree in math from Dartmouth in yummy ’69 and sadly stayed a bachelor for many years.
He got an M.A.T. in math education from Harvard. Since he went to Harvard, you know he’s a genius. Like most genii, he achieved the high honor of being a junior-high teacher. After his classes showered him with the Paper Airplane Award, he moved on to teach at a private school for exclusive girls. (“Exclusive” means everyone can come except you.)
After teaching every grade from 2 through 12 (he taught the 2™_srade girls how to run the computer, the 12" graders less intellectual things), he fled reality by joining Wesleyan University’s math Ph.D. program in Connecticut’s Middletown (the middle of Nowhere), where after 18 months of highbrow hoopla he was seduced by a computer to whom he’s now happily married.
Married _ life After the wedding, Russ moved with his electrifying wife to Boston’s Northeastern University, where he did a hilarious job of teaching in the naughty Department of “Graphic Science.” After quitting Northeastern and also editorship of Personal Computing, he spends his time now happily losing money by publishing this book.
To provide company for his electronic wife, he bought her 40 computers, hid them in a van, and drove them around the country, where they performed orgies and did a strip tease, to show students a thing or two about computer anatomy. Banned in Boston, Russ and his groupies moved north, to Somerville, until it became slumville in 1998, when they moved further north, to New Hampshire, the “granite state,” since Russ has rocks in his head.
That year, Russ became a bigamist: though still married to a computer, he also married a human. She’s a Chinese philosopher even stranger than Russ. The couple is called ““Russy-poo old and Egg-foo young.”
Kuss‘s_ body Here are Russ’s stats, from head to toe:
head in the clouds, hair departing, brow beaten, eyes glazed, lashes 40, nose to the grindstone, mouth off, smile bionic, tongue bitten,
teeth remembered, cheeks in a royal flush, chin up, shoulders burdened, wrists watched, hands some, thumbs up, heart all, back got everyone on it, buns toasted, knees knocked, heeled well, arches gothic, toes stepped on
He wears a stuffed shirt and sacramental socks — very holy!
Kuss‘’s_ résumé We told Russ to write this book because when he handed us this résumé, we knew he was the type of author that publishers long for: nuts enough to work for free!
Age: too. Sex: yes! Race: rat. Religion: Reformed Nerd.
Address: wear pants instead. City: Zen. State: distressed. Zip: up fly. Birthplace: in my mom. Citizenship: US, not THEM.
Father: time. Mother: earth. Spouse: Brussels. Kids: you often.
Social security: 007-vs-666. Phone home: E.T. Cell phone: no, buy phone. Occupation: vegetable. Career goal: play dead. Objective: yes, not biased.
Work experience: giggle. Military experience: salute my dad. Language experience: Frenching. Education: Ph.Uk.
Hobbies: sleep & cry. Sport: dodge tomatoes. Desire: hide under sink. Disabilities: have dis ability & dat ability. Preferred seat: first ass. Favorite food: thought. Dietary restriction: can’t eat people, unless fried. Humor: less.
About our headquarters Come visit our Home Office, in Russ’s home. It includes our Production Department, near or in Russ’s bed. Russ gave birth to this book himself; nobody else would dare!
Special services
We do everything possible to make you happy....
Discounts
We give you a 20% discount for buying 2 copies of this edition, 30% for 3 copies, and 40% for 4 copies or more (so you pay just $18 per copy). To get the discounts, use the coupon on the back page (or phone Russ at 603-666-6644).
Use _your past You're reading the 34" edition. To compute your discount, we count how many copies you’ve ordered from us so far of the 34" edition. (Earlier editions are irrelevant.) For example, if you previously ordered 1 copy of the 34" edition and order 3 more, we say “Oh, you’re up to 4 copies now!” and give you a 40% discount on the second order.
To get a discount based on past orders, phone Russ or mail the coupon on the back page (but near your name, write your phone number and “Discount because of past orders”).
Cheap or free shipping We're in New Hampshire. We ship books to the USA by standard mail, free! We usually ship promptly, so you get books quickly.
If you’re in the U.S. and in a rush, add $7 to your order to get your books even faster: we’ ll use a faster shipping method or move your order to the front of the line.
If you want us to ship to a different country, add $12 per book to Canada, $18 per book to other countries.
We charge less than the post office usually charges us, but we don’t mind losing money on shipping, since we’re computer lifestyle missionaries who don’t care about profit.
Free reprints
You may copy this edition free. Copy as many pages as you like, make lots of copies, and don’t pay us a cent! Just phone Russ first (at 603-666-6644) and say which pages you’re going to copy. Put this notice at the beginning of your reprint:
Much of this material comes from The Secret Guide to Computers & Tricky Living, 34" edition, copyright 2022 by Russ Walter and reprinted with permission.
Get free literature about the newest complete Guide, in 4 ways:
e call Russ’s cell phone, 603-666-6644, day or night, 24 hours; he sleeps just lightly e visit the official Secret website, SecretFun.com
e send email to Russ@SecretFun.com
e mail a note to Russ Walter, 196 Tiffany Lane, Manchester NH 03104-4782
Then send us a copy of your reprint.
You may give — or sell — the reprints to anybody. Go distribute them on paper, disks, or memory sticks, by email, or by your own Web postings. The Guide’s been distributed by thousands of teachers,
consultants, and stores and translated to other languages. Join those folks! Add your own comments, call yourself a co-author, and become famous! It’s free!
Book on a stick
You can order this edition printed on a copyable USB memory stick instead of paper. The stick includes files in Microsoft Word format and also Acrobat PDF format. The stick will help you write your own books and develop material to put on Internet Websites.
If you order this edition on stick, we recommend you order it on paper also, since the stick is more awkward to read than the printed book.
Internet
Visit our Secret Fun site, www.SecretFun.com. It reveals new secrets about our books & services & discounts, includes links to other secret fun Internet sites, and lets you read parts of our books online free. You can send email to Russ@SecretFun.com.
Get the classics
You’re reading the 34" edition. To squeeze so many new topics into it, we had to leave out older topics, which you can still get in our classic books. To let you get those classics easily, we’ve dropped editions 31, 32, and 33 to just $7 each, all earlier classics to $2 per book. At those prices, with free U.S. shipping, we lose money on every classic, but we’re happy to do that, since our mission is to be helpful, not rich. Grab a whole bunch o’ books for yourself, friends, colleagues, schools, and charities.
Here are the biggest differences among the last eight editions of the Secret Guide:
Windows 3 & 95 Windows 98 Windows 98SE & Me Windows XP Windows Vista Windows 7
Windows 8 & 8.1 Windows 10 Windows 11
Editions
27 28 29 30 28 29 30 28 29 30 31 32 30 31 32 31 32 33 32 33 33 34 34
Internet Explorer Microsoft Edge
27 28 29 30 31 32 33 33 34
Netscape Navigator Mozilla Firefox Chrome & Safari
27 28 30 31 32 31 32 33 34
Outlook Express Yahoo Mail
27 28 29 30 31 32 30 31 32 33 30 31 32 33 34 31 32 33 34
iPad basics iPad details
27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 32 33 34
iPhone Android
32 33 32 33 34
tricky living included
2016 president election 2020 president election emotional integers
31 32 33 34
dBase, FoxPro, Q&A WordPerfect & Quattro MS Publisher & Access modern MS Word
27 28 27 28 29 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 30 31 32 33 34
QBasic’s advanced tricks QBasic’s essentials QB64
BBC Basic for Windows
27 28 29 27 28 29 30 31 31 32 33 34
Fortran, Cobol, Logo Pascal
C
Visual C++
Java
Visual Basic
Visual C#
Python
21 27 28 27 28 29 30 27 28 29 30 31 32 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 31 32 33 34 33 34
Front Page advanced HTML JavaScript & JScript
27 28 29 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 29 30 31 32 33 34
numerical analysis computer dictionary Linux KDE & Palm OS blogs
new advice on buy&fix
28 29 30 30 31 32 34
Classic editions of Tricky Living include
thousands of other differences. For example, the first & second editions of Tricky Living include a discussion of prostitution; the current book discusses the Bible instead. To get classic editions, use the coupon on the back page. We especially recommend:
the 33" edition (unabridged!) the 27" edition (historic!)
Tricky Living’s first edition (uncensored!)
Get more intense
We’re developing more editions & events. Join our mailing list by using the back page’s coupon. Russ answers questions, quickly & free, on his cell phone, 603-666-6644. He can also meet you for intense face-to-face tutoring & seminars, cheaply; phone for details.
Buying: use this book 9
How to shop
Here’s how to shop for a computer — and deal with the jargon that’s involved.
Kinds of computers
Hey kid, wanna getta computer? You got lotsa choices, and they keep changing.
How computers changed
The definition of “computer” has changed.
Before 1940, computers were human. Dictionaries said a “computer” was “a person who computes.” If you could add, subtract, multiply, and divide quickly, in your head, you were called “a good computer.” Astronomers hired computers who computed the positions of heavenly bodies.
In the 1940's, engineers invented giant electronic machines that could compute fast, so a “computer” meant “a giant electronic machine that can compute fast.” The typical computer was huge (consuming a whole room), weighed several tons, and cost millions of dollars. During World War 2, American engineers built computers to do ballistics (figure out how to aim a rocket to bomb Germans), while German engineers built computers to figure out how to bomb Americans back.
In the 1950's, computers got slightly cheaper. Big companies bought them to do accounting and other clerical tasks, such as alphabetizing and looking up customer records. A “computer” meant “‘a machine that can do intellectual tasks, such as math and clerical stuff.”
In the 1960's, engineers figured out how to make electronics be smaller and cheaper. That led to smaller computers, called minicomputers. In the 1970's, engineers invented even smaller computers, called microcomputers. By the end of the 1970’s, you could buy all 3 sizes of computers:
A maxicomputer filled a room and typically cost between $300,000 and $20,000,000.
A minicomputer fit in a room’s corner
and typically cost between $10,000 and $300,000.
A microcomputer fit on a desk
and typically cost between $100 and $10,000.
The typical big company owned a maxicomputer; but each department also had its own minicomputer (to handle the department’s special needs), and each clerk had a personal microcomputer (to do specialized work but also play games). A microcomputer used mainly by just one person is called a personal computer (PC).
Nowadays, the typical company is run by a collection of microcomputers, all communicating with each other, because that collection costs less than buying a maxicomputer or minicomputers. “Maxicomputers” and “minicomputers” have become obsolete, and those terms aren’t used anymore. The typical computer is a microcomputer costing between $100 and $2,000.
Now computers do many kinds of intellectual tasks, so the definition of “computer” has become “a machine that can do intellectual tasks.” Popular intellectual tasks include math, clerical organizing (alphabetizing & looking up records), playing games,
10 Buying: how to shop
editing your writing, communicating with folks living far away, and controlling other machines.
If your employer bought a computer many years ago and refuses to replace it with something more modern (because switching takes too much effort), the polite way to describe your anger is to say that you’re stuck using a legacy system, because your employer’s computer is a legacy handed down from folks who preceded you: a legacy system is an outdated computer system.
Embedded computers
If a computer hides inside a machine and controls it, the computer is called hidden and embedded. It’s called an embedded system.
For example, a computer’s embedded in your digital watch, microwave oven, pocket calculator, home thermostat, car dashboard, videogame machine, and advanced sex toys. There’s even an embedded computer in your bed, if you bought a massager.
Such a computer dedicates its entire life to performing just one task (such as “telling the time” or “controlling the oven”), so it’s also called a dedicated computer and a dedicated controller. Most such computers can be made for under $10 each — after the manufacturer has spent many thousands of dollars to research how to make them. If you meet a person whose career is “developing embedded systems”, that person invents computers that hide inside other devices.
The typical cell phone includes an embedded computer. If that computer is advanced, the phone is called smart, so it’s a smartphone. Now most cell phones are smartphones, but you can still buy 3 kinds of cell phones:
Kind of cell phone What kind of computer it contains
basic phone a computer that’s relatively stupid
a computer smart enough to give you a few fun features a computer that’s brilliant about many things
feature phone smartphone
If a computer isn’t hidden, it’s visible.
This book explains how to buy & use visible computers. It also explains how to buy & use smartphones, so you can become a smarty, not just a plain phony.
To build a complete computer system, you need hardware, software, and liveware.
Hardware
Computer equipment is called hardware because it’s built from wires, screws, and other parts you can buy in hardware & electronics stores. Cynics say it’s called “hardware” because it’s hard to fix and because, when you try to buy hardware, you can get screwed and go nuts.
The computer’s parts are called its components. You want several kinds of computer components.
Output A component showing you the answer is called an output device. The most popular output devices are:
a screen (which is also called a display), like a TV screen
a printer (which can print on paper) a pair of stereo speakers
{nput A component letting you give the computer a command is called an input device. The most popular input device is a keyboard, which resembles a typewriter’s keyboard.
Another input device is a mouse (a little box you slide across your desk, to move a pointer that’s on your screen). Instead of a mouse, you can use a touchpad (a pad your finger rubs across) or touch-sensitive screen (touchscreen), which looks like an ordinary screen but can sense where your finger taps the screen.
Your computer system can also include a microphone (so you can talk & sing to the computer), a camera (so the computer can see what you and your environment look like), and an optical scanner (a special camera that looks at a sheet of paper and copies its info into the computer). If the optical scanner hides inside a printer, the printer is called an all-in-one printer and can imitate a Xerox copying machine. Some all-in-one printers can also imitate a fax machine.
Input devices and output devices are both called 1/0 devices. Computerists sing “I/O, I/O, it’s off to work I go!”
Processor The component that thinks is the processor. The computer’s main processor is called the central processing unit (CPU). The most popular kind of processor is a microprocessor chip (little square onto which is stamped a fancy electric circuit).
Memory Components that remember are called memory.
The most popular memory is made of memory chips (little squares that can retain a magnetic or electric charge). Another kind of memory is a disk (a rotating circular platter that holds a code made of scratches or magnetic charges). Disks are slower than memory chips but have more capacity (can hold more info).
Why those 2? For a computer to do useful thinking, you need all 3 of those types of hardware:
The processor does the thinking itself; it processes info.
The memory remembers the computer’s thoughts. The I/O devices communicate those thoughts.
A computer without memory is as useless as a person who says, “I had a great idea but can’t remember it.” A computer without an input/output system is as useless as a person who says, “T had a great idea and remember it but won’t tell you, and I also won’t listen to anything you say.”
When yow’re buying a computer, check all 3 types and make sure they’re good. This book explains how to judge them.
Communication A component letting the computer communicate with other computers is called a communication device.
The most popular communication device is a modulator/demodulator (modem, pronounced “Moe dem”), which is a box that connects your computer to a phone system (or to a cable-TV system). Another communication device is a router (pronounced so it rhymes with “chowder”), which lets several computers share routes to a modem (or to a similar device).
System unit The computer’s main box is the system unit, in which hide the processor, memory, and many other electronics. The system unit’s outer surface is the case.
Cables A cable (insulated bunch of wires) can connect one component to another.
The most popular kind of cable is the Universal Serial Bus cable (USB cable). For example, a USB cable typically runs from the printer to the system unit.
Software
The info the computer deals with is called software, because you can’t feel it: it flows through the computer’s circuits as coded pulses of electricity.
Some software sits in your computer’s memory (in memory chips or disks). When your computer is turned on, software flows into & out of your computer’s memory, through the computer’s wires.
For example:
Software (info) gets into the computer when you insert chips or disks or type on the keyboard.
You can copy software (info) from the computer’s memory
to your screen & printer.
Software (info) gets transferred into and out of your computer by communicating with other computers.
Hardware consists of physical objects. You can hold them in your hand; you can feel hardware. You can’t feel software, which is just information, an abstract concept, though you can feel the disks or memory chips it comes on.
The info you put into the computer is called input. What the computer puts out (onto your screen & printer) is called output.
If you feed the computer wrong software — wrong facts or wrong instructions — the computer will print wrong answers. Wrong stuff is called garbage. If you feed the computer some garbage, the computer spits out garbage answers. When a computer gives wrong answers (wrong output), it’s usually because somebody fed it wrong input. So if a computer prints wrong answers, the computer might not be broken; it might just have been fed wrong data or programs. If you tell a technician to fix it, the technician might reply, “Hey, the computer’s fine! Don’t blame the computer! It’s your fault for feeding it garbage! If you put garbage in, you get garbage out!” That principle is called “garbage in, garbage out” (which is abbreviated GIGO, pronounced “guy go”, as a woman says on a bad date). The technician will say, “It’s just a case of GIGO”.
Your computer wants 2 kinds of software:
data (lists of names, addresses, numbers, words, and facts) programs (lists of instructions that tell the computer what to do)
Your computer wants 3 kinds of programs:
The basic input-output system (BIOS) tells the computer how to begin handling input & output when you turn the power on. For example, it tells the computer how to deal with the keyboard and screen. The BIOS hides in the computer’s memory chips.
The operating system (OS) tells the computer what to do afterwards. It gives the computer its personality. The most popular operating system for normal computers is Microsoft’s Windows. Though “PC” usually means
“personal computer,” a more restrictive definition of “PC” is: a computer that resembles IBM’s Personal Computer and uses Windows. The main competitor to Windows is Apple’s macOS, made for Apple’s Mac computers. The most popular operating systems for smartphones are Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.
Application programs (apps) tell the computer how to do specialized tasks, such as play a specific game or do a specific kind of advanced math.
When you buy a computer, the advertised price usually includes the important hardware, the BIOS, the OS, and applets (little apps that accomplish a little), but you must pay extra to add apps that are bigger & better.
Apps that are crappy (because they consist mainly of just ads) are called crapps. Too many computers are full of crapps.
When you buy a computer, you’ll cry, because it typically comes full of crapplets (little apps that are crapps).
Buying: how to shop 11
Liveware
How good is a computer system? That depends on the quality of 3 wares:
Hardware (computer equipment)
Software (info in the computer) Liveware (an alive human sitting at the computer)
The liveware is called the user or operator. That’s you!
If you’re stupid, your colleagues will call you a meathead (because your head is made of bad meat instead of wires). You’ ll also be called meatware, wetware (because your brain is wetter than a computer’s), and jellyware (because your brain cells are jiggly, like jelly).
For example, if you make a mistake and try to blame the computer, your boss can say:
The problem isn’t in the computer. The problem’s in the wetware.
Your boss can also write:
PICNIC: Problem In Chair, Not In Computer.
The problem’s an “I D ten T” (because you’re an ID-10-T, an IDIOT!). Here’s when that jargon began:
The term “liveware” was popularized by Garry Trudeau in a 1982 Doonesbury cartoon, though invented by others in 1966.
The term “meathead” was popularized by the TV character Archie Bunker in 1971, though used back in 1863.
Summary
For a complete computer system, you need all 3 wares: the hardware (equipment), software (info), and liveware (people).
Beware of the 3 wares! You can spend lots to buy hardware (and repair it), buy software (and improve it), and hire helpers (and train them). Make sure you’ve budgeted for all 3 wares!
Congrats! Now you know the 3 ways that buying a computer can suck up your money. Yes, buying a computer can suck.
Like people, computers come in many shapes & sizes. A computer’s size & shape is called its form factor. Here are the 4 most popular form factors, listed from smallest to biggest:
Form factor Typical screen size Alternative screen sizes smartphone 6.1 inches anywhere from 4to 6.9 inches tablet 10.2 inches laptop 15.6 inches desktop 23.8 inches “Screen size” is measured diagonally (from the top-left corner to the bottom-right corner of the glass).
Let’s look at the details...
Smartphone
A smartphone can make phone calls and is small enough to fit in your pocket. Its screen is touch-sensitive: it knows where you touched it.
In the United States, most people use smartphones by Apple (which is American) or Samsung (which is Korean and means “3 stars” in Korean).
anywhere from 7 to 12.9 inches anywhere from 10 to 17.3 inches anywhere from 14 to 31.5 inches
Apple’s smartphones are called iPhones and use the iOS operating system (invented by Apple).
Samsung’s smartphones are called Galaxy and use the Android operating system (invented by Google). Other popular Android smartphones are made by Motorola and LG.
12 Buying: how to shop
If a smartphone’s screen is bigger than average, so it’s almost as big as a tablet, the smartphone is called a phablet (because it’s a phone tablet and, if you like big phones, you think it’s phabulous!). The most popular phablets are Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10 and Samsung’s Galaxy $20.
Tablet
A tablet computer is bigger than a smartphone, so its screen is easier to read and type on. It can’t fit in your pocket, but it can fit in your pair of hands (though it works better on your desk). If it can fit in just one hand, it’s called a handheld computer.
Since a tablet computer can’t make phone calls, it’s cheaper than a smartphone, and it’s safer to give to young kids to play on. Tablet computers are popular among kids, car passengers, and delivery drivers (such as UPS and FedEx).
The most famous tablet computer is Apple’s iPad, which uses the iPadOS operating system.
Some tablet computers use Android instead of iPadOS. Popular Android tablet computers are Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and Walmart’s Onn.
Microsoft’s Surface tablet uses the Windows operating system.
If a tablet’s main purpose is to read electronic books (ebooks), it’s called an ebook reader (or e-reader). The most popular e-readers are Barnes & Noble’s Nook (which uses Android) and Amazon’s Fire (which uses a variant of Android).
Laptop
A laptop computer is bigger than a tablet, so its screen is even easier to read. The laptop computer includes a keyboard (like a typewriter), which is much easier to type on than trying to type on the screen. That’s the main advantage of a laptop computer over smartphone or tablet: easier typing!
When you look at a typical laptop computer, you see mainly the screen plus the keyboard The keyboard is attached to the screen by a hinge. Having a hinge is called a clamshell design, since opening and closing the laptop is like opening and closing a clam’s shell. Open the laptop to use it; close the laptop to transport it.
Most of the electronics (such as the processor and the memory) hide inside the keyboard, not in the screen.
A typical laptop computer (15.6-inch screen) is also called a notebook computer, since it’s about the size of a student’s notebook.
A laptop’s keyboard includes a touchpad. The laptop’s screen might be a touchscreen or might be too stupid to know where you touched.
The laptop’s price does not include a mouse, but you’ll want to attach one.
The typical good laptop computer includes the Windows operating system and is made by Lenovo (which is based in Hong Kong, Beijing, Singapore, and North Carolina). Other popular Windows laptop computers are made by Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Dell.
Cheap laptops, popular in schools (because they’ re cheap), are called Chromebooks. They use Google’s Chrome OS instead of Windows.
Apple’s laptops are called MacBooks and use macOS.
If you’re not sure which is better for you — laptop or tablet — you can try this compromise:
If a laptop computer has a touchscreen you can rotate or detach, so the touchscreen acts like a tablet, it’s called a convertible (or 2-in-1).
Smartphones, tablets, and laptops are all called portable computers and mobile devices that let you do mobile computing, because they’re easy to carry around (using just one arm) and contain batteries (so you can use them even when you’re not near an electrical socket).
Desktop If a computer is too big to carry in one arm but still small enough to fit on a desk, it’s called a desktop computer. It resembles a laptop computer but has these differences:
The screen is much bigger and is attached to a built-in stand. The keyboard is not hinged to the screen. The keyboard is detached.
There’s no big battery. The computer runs just when plugged into the wall. The price includes a mouse, so the keyboard doesn’t bother to include a touchpad.
Where are most of the electronics, such as the processor and the memory? In a laptop computer, they’re hidden in the keyboard, but in a desktop computer they’re hidden elsewhere.
If the electronics are hidden in the screen (behind the screen’s glass), the system is called an all-in-one computer. The most popular manufacturers of all-in-one computers are Hewlett- Packard (HP) and Dell.
If the electronics are hidden in a separate box instead, that box is called the system unit. That box is easier to open than a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or all-in-one computer, so you can easily modify its electronics to achieve fancier abilities, such as handling more data and playing faster games. Its price might not include a screen.
If the system unit is tall (typically 15 inches) but not wide, it’s called a tower, and it can be put on or under the desk. The most popular manufacturers of towers for business are Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, and
Dell. The most popular manufacturers of towers for fast games are CyberPower and iBuyPower.
If the system unity is wide but not tall, it’s traditionally put on the desk and called a traditional desktop computer. If it’s no more than 34 inches tall, so it’s basically flat like a Domino’s pizza-delivery box, it’s called a pizza-box computer. The pizza-box computer is called 1-unit tall (1U) if it’s just 1% inches tall; it’s called 2-units tall (2U) if it’s 3% inches tall. Ina huge company, the main computer room contains many 1U and 2U pizza-box computers, all sitting in a cabinet full of shelves (racks) to hold them; they’re called rack-mounted computers.
Which form factor to buy
Which form factor should you buy? That depends on your priorities. Here are the grades, from A (which is the best) to F: Smartphone Tablet Laptop Desktop Makes phone calls? F Easy to carry? Can run unplugged?
Has big screen?
Has big memory? Has good keyboard? AVERAGE
Notice that for each form factor, the “AVERAGE” grade is approximately C. That’s why each form factor is still being used.
Which form factor is best for you? That depends on your priorities.
Since I was stupid enough to write this book, I had to buy all 4 form factors, to try them out. Each form factor has its own joys — and its own form of hell.
Instead of buying a big computer, the typical big company buys many little computers and lets them communicate with each other, to form a network.
If the computers communicate with each other through cables of wires, the network is called hard-wired. If the computers communicate with each other by using radio waves instead, the network is called wireless.
If the network’s computers are all in the same building, the network is called a local-area network (LAN). If the computers are farther apart, the network is called a wide-area network (WAN).
Each computer in the network is called a node.
A special person (the network supervisor) manages the network by controlling the network's main computer (the server). Ordinary folks (users) sit at the network’s lesser computers (workstations), which all communicate with the server.
The most famous wide-area network is the Internet. It began in the 1950’s as a small network (a few universities communicating with each other) but later expanded dramatically, so now it includes millions of computers all over the world; most of the world’s visible computers are part of the Internet. When you buy a typical computer, it communicates with the Internet wirelessly (using radio waves) or through an ordinary phone line (called dial-up) or through a speeded-up phone line called a digital-subscriber line (DSL) or through a cable-TV line (called cable). An ordinary phone line (dial-up) is ridiculously slow; the other methods (wireless, DSL, and cable) are reasonably fast and called broadband. So if a computerist says “I want broadband,” the computerist wants fast Internet access, not a band of female musicians!
You can mix technologies. For example, the typical laptop computer communicates with the Internet by sending a radio wave (wirelessly) to a little box, called a wireless router (usually pronounced so the “rou” rhymes with “cow”), which then passes the signal to the rest of the Internet by using cable or DSL, with the help of a converter box called a modulator/demodulator (modem, pronounced “Moe dem’). You can buy a wireless router (and modem) for your home or office.
When the wireless router is turned on (and attached to a modem), it creates a wireless access point (WAP), which is also called a hot spot. While you’re traveling with your laptop computer, you can use the hot spots that are in many coffeehouses, restaurants, public libraries, and other public locations. You can use them even while you’re driving by in your car; that’s called wardriving.
Buying: how to shop 13
Manufacturers
Who makes computers?
IBM 4@& Lenovo
The most famous computer manufacturer has been IBM, which stands for International Business Machines Corporation.
Too often, it also stood for “Incredibly Boring Machines”, “Inertia Breeds Mediocrity”, “International Big Mother’, “Imperialism By Marketing”, “Idolized By Management”, “Incompetents Becoming Managers”, “Intolerant of Beards & Mustaches”, “It Baffles Me’, “It’s a Big Mess”, and “It’s Better Manually”. But those negative comments apply just to IBM’s past: in the 1990’s IBM switched; it became open-minded and friendly.
IBM is based in the town of Armonk, New York.
During the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s, IBM was famous for selling huge computers (called maxicomputers or mainframes or powerful servers).
Later, IBM started selling small computers also. IBM’s first successful small computer was a desktop computer called the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC). Then other companies made imitations, called IBM-compatible computers or IBM PC clones. Now most desktop and laptop computers are IBM-compatible.
Recently, IBM’s stopped making cheap computers for consumers: instead, IBM sells just expensive computers (powerful servers) to big businesses. For example, IBM used to make a laptop computer called the ThinkPad, but IBM sold its ThinkPad division to Lenovo (which is mainly in Hong Kong but recently created a headquarters office in North Carolina, to look American). IBM is in 120 countries. The country having the most IBM employees is India, not the United States.
HP
A California company called Hewlett-Packard (HP) has made more computers than any other company. It’s made many kinds of computers: powerful servers, tower computers, laptop computers, tablet computers, and hidden computers. Most of them were sold under the name “HP”; others were sold under the names “Compaq” and “Palm” which are companies that Hewlett-Packard acquired. Many of HP’s computers are sold in chain stores such Best Buy, Staples, and Walmart. In 2015, HP split into 2 companies:
HP Incorporated sells cheap computers & printers. Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company manages huge systems for huge businesses. Dell
A Texas company called Dell sold computers through mail-order but now also sells computers through chain stores (such as Staples and Best Buy). It mainly makes desktop computers and laptop computers, though it dabbles in other kinds of computers also. Dell used to have a reputation for high quality, but now Dell’s computers are unexceptional or problematic.
Gateway & Acer An Iowa company called Gateway was famous for selling desktop computers through mail-order. Gateway acquired a company called “eMachines”, which was famous for selling desktop computers cheaply through chain stores, especially Best Buy and Circuit City. Gateway sells computers through mail order & stores. Gateway moved from Iowa to South Dakota but now is headquartered in California. The entire Gateway company was bought by a Taiwan company called Acer.
Asian laptops Many companies in Asia make laptop computers. The most famous are Acer (from Taiwan), Asus (from Taiwan and means “Pegasus but let’s begin with A”), and Lenovo (mainly from Hong Kong, though headquartered in North Carolina). Japanese companies (Sony & Toshiba) used to make laptop computers but quit in 2016.
14 Buying: how to shop
White -box computers
Many tiny computer stores build their own “generic” tower computers by throwing together parts from many suppliers. Such an unbranded computer is called a white-box computer, since the system unit is a typically a plain white metal box that has no manufacturer’s name written on it.
Apple
A California company called Apple makes the iPhone (a smartphone), the iPad (a tablet computer), and Macintosh (Mac) computers (laptops & all-in-ones). They’re all beautiful to look at, creatively designed, fun & easy to use, reliable, and come with good free help at Apple stores and by phone. Apple’s Mac computers are particularly popular among graphic artists and magazine publishers.
Alas, Apple’s computers cost more than the competition, and Apple’s computers aren’t completely compatible with other computers: if you buy an Apple computer, you must learn to do things differently and buy different accessories for it.
What's popular? Here’s the surprising truth. For “normal” computers (meaning laptop & desktop), Lenovo is strongest:
Of all the “normal” computers (laptop & desktop, not tablet, not phone, not embedded) sold today in the world,
24% are by Lenovo
22% are by HP
16% are by Dell 8% are by Apple (and called “Macs”) 8% are by Acer 22% are by a wide variety of other manufacturers
Since percentages bob up and down by 2% each month, I’ve rounded all those percentages to the nearest 2%.
For tablet computers, Apple is strongest:
Of all the tablet computers sold today in the world, 32% are by Apple (and called “iPads’’) 20% are by Samsung 10% are by Lenovo 8% are by Amazon 6% are by Huawei 24% are by a wide variety of other manufacturers
For smartphones, Samsung is strongest:
Of all the smartphones sold today in the world, 22% are by Samsung 16% are by Apple (and called “iPhones”)
14% are by Xiaomi
10% are by Oppo
10% are by Vivo
28% are by a wide variety of other manufacturers
On average, computer prices dropped 3% per month. That price decline was in effect from the 1940’s through 2019, though it was interrupted in 2020 by the Covid-19 pandemic, a shortage of chips & truckers, international trade tariffs, and an increased demand by home- schooled kids. I hope the price drop resumes.
Here’s how that drop of 3% per month would affect you....
Suppose for a particular computer item the average price charged by dealers is $100. Next month, that item’s average price will probably drop 3%, to $97. After two months, its average price will have dropped about 3% again, so its price will be 97% of $97, which is $94.09.
Here’s how the math works out:
On the average, computer prices drop about 3% per month, 30% per year,
50% every two years, 90% every six years, 99% every twelve years.
Therefore:
If a computer item’s average price is $100 today, it will probably be $97 next month, $70 a year from now, $50 two years from now, $10 six years from now, $1 twelve years from now.
The typical computer system costs about $1000 (by the time you get done paying for all the extras & accessories). Here’s what the math looks like for a $1000 system:
If a computer system costs you $1000 today, it will probably cost you $970 if you buy a month from now,
$700 if you buy a year from now,
$500 if you buy 2 years from now,
$100 if you buy 6 years from now, $10 if you buy 12 years from now.
Does that mean computer stores will be selling lots of computers for $10 twelve years from now? No! Instead, computer stores will still be selling computers for about $1000, but those $1000 systems will be much fancier than the systems sold today. By comparison, today’s systems will look primitive — much too primitive to run the programs-of-the-future — so they’ll be sold off as old, quaint, primitive junk in garage sales.
Find that hard to believe? To become a believer in rapidly dropping prices, just try this experiment: walk into a garage sale today, and you’ll see computer systems selling for $10 that sold for $1000 twelve years ago!
So the longer you wait to buy a computer, the less you’ll pay. But the longer you wait, the longer you’ll be deprived of having a computer, and the further behind you’ll be in computerizing your life and becoming a computer expert. Don’t wait. Begin your new computerized life now!
Subculture
Computers are like drugs: you begin by spending just a little on them but soon get so excited by the experience — and so hooked — that you wind up spending more and more to feed your habit.
Your first computer experience seems innocent: you spend just a little money for a cute little computer. You turn the computer on and suddenly the computer’s screen shows dazzling superhuman colors, swirling hypnotically. You say “Wow, look at all those colors!” and feel a supernatural high.
But after 2 months of freaking out with your new computer, the high wears off and you wonder, “What can I buy that’s new, exciting, and gives me an even bigger high?” So you buy more stuff to attach to your computer. Now you’re in really deep, financially and spiritually. You’re hooked. You’ve
become addicted to computers. Each month you return to your favorite computer store to search for an even bigger high — and spend more money.
Look at me. I’m a typical computer junkie. I’ve already bought 50 computers, and I’m still going. Somebody help me! My computers have taken over my home. Whenever I try to go to sleep, I see those computers staring at me, their lights winking, tempting me to spend a few more hours in naughty fun, even if the sun’s already beginning to rise.
Computerists use the same lingo as druggies: to buy a computer, you go to a dealer; and when you finally start using your computer, you’re called a user.
As your addiction deepens and you search for greater highs, you squander even more money on computer equipment, called hardware. You stay up late (playing computer games or removing errors), so next morning you go to work bleary-eyed. Your boss soon suspects your computer habit, realizes you’re not giving full attention to your job, and fires you.
Jobless while your computer bills mount ever higher, you run out of money to spend on computers, but your computer addiction still runs through your brain. To support your habit, you write or buy programs and try to resell them to friends. That makes you a pusher: you turn your friends into addicts too, and you all join the increasing subculture of computer junkies.
Drugs differ from computers in just one way: if you’re into drugs, people call you a “washout”; but if you’re into computers, people say you’ll have a “wonderful career” — and they’re right!
As a computer pusher, you can make lots of dough, but just if instead of calling yourself a “pusher” you call yourself a computer consultant. Yes, a computer consultant is a person who gives computer advice to other victims — and pushes them into buying more computers!
A computer consultant who gives free help seems kind, but the truth is revealed in these lines of Tom Lehrer’s song,“The Old Dope Peddler”:
He gives the kids free samples Because he knows full well
That today’s young innocent faces Will be tomorrow’s clientele.
Your marriage
The computer will fascinate you. It’ll seduce you to spend more time with it. You’ ll fall in love with it. You’ll start buying it presents: exotic foods (expensive programs to munch on) and expensive jewels (a printer and fancier speakers).
Then the computer will demand you give it more. While you enjoy an exciting orgy with your computer and think it’s the most joyous thing that ever happened to you, suddenly the computer will demand you buy it more memory. It’ll refuse to continue the orgy until you agree to its demand. And you’ll agree — eagerly!
The computer’s a demanding lover. You’!l feel married to it.
Marrying a computer is much groovier than marrying a person: computers are good at “getting it on”
(they feel all electric and tingly) and they never argue (they’re always ready to “‘do it”, except when they “have a headache”).
I wanted to call this book “The Sexual Guide to Computers” and put a photo of my computer wife and me on the cover; but since some communities dislike mixed marriages, I had to play cool and say just “Secret” Guide to Computers. But here’s the real secret: this book’s about sex.
Buying: how to shop 15
If you marry a computer but already married a human, your human spouse will call you a “bigamist” and feel jealous of the computer. Your marriage to that human can deteriorate into divorce.
Several women got divorced because they took my computer course. Their husbands had 2 complaints:
“You spend most of your time with the computer instead of with me. When you do spend time with me, all you want to talk about is the computer.”
To prevent such marital problems, coax your spouse to play a game on the computer. Your spouse will get hooked on the game, become as addicted to the computer as you, enjoy blabbing about the computer with you, and encourage you spend money on your habit. Sociologists call that technological progress.
Why buy a computer?
The average American has 3 goals: to make money, have fun, and “become a better person”. Making money is called business; having fun is pleasure; and becoming a better person is personal development. The computer will help you do all 3: improve your business, increase your pleasure, and help you become a better person.
The reasons why people buy computers are emotional:
Teenager: “Computers are a blast: sci-fi come true!”
Parent: “My kids must become computer-competent to survive! If 1 buy my kids a computer, they’Il explore it (instead of sex & drugs), wonder how it’s programmed, become programmers, get straight A’s in school, become computer consultants, and make lots of dough, so they can support me in my old age and I can brag about them to my neighbors.”
Grandparent: “The world’s becoming computerized, and I don’t want my grandkids to say I’m out of it. I wouldn’t blow money on this stuff myself, but my kids are giving me a computer so grandkids can send me mail and photos electronically, using the Internet. Those grandkids are so cute! Computers are so much fun!”
Kindergartner: “Grandma, I wanna computer for my birthday! And if you don’t buy it, they say I’Il never go to Harvard.”
Worried worker: “My company’s computerizing. If I don’t master computers, they’l master me and steal my job! If I learn about computers, I can keep my job, get promoted, then quit and become a rich computer consultant!”
Adventurer: “The computer’s a challenge. If I can master it, that proves ’m not as stupid as people say!”
Wanting what's due: “I’ve been treated like shit all my life; I deserve a computer! I’m gonna get my hands on that machine and make it my slave.”
Subversive: “If Big Brother has Big Blue watching me, I’ll turn my computer into Big Mama and scramble their waves!”
Social-studies teacher: “The Internet’s amazing! So much info is published there about current events, history, and the future! I’ll make my students do research using the Internet and publish their papers there, so they’ ll become internationally famous and make me famous for being their teacher!”
Hassles
When you buy a computer, you’ ll have lots of hassles.
Kepairs Since a complete computer system includes so many parts (CPU, ROM, RAM, disks, keyboard, screen, mouse, printer, stereo speakers, modem, microphone, scanner, network card, software, etc.), at least one of them won’t work properly, and you must fix it.
Instructions You won’t completely understand the instructions for your hardware & software, so you'll ask your friends & me for help. You try getting help from manufacturers and dealers; but if your question’s long-winded, their answers will be curt.
If the dealer who sold you the computer is honest, he’ Il say:
16 Buying: how to shop
“T don’t know how to run all the hardware & software I sold you. To learn how, read the instructions and buy books in bookstores. No, I haven’t read them myself, because they’re too long-winded, complicated, and vague. If
you don’t like those instructions, take our courses: they’re expensive and won’t teach you as much as you need, but they’ll give you the illusion you’re making some progress.”
Most dealers aren’t that candid.
Programs If you try writing your own programs, you'll discover Murphy’s law: no matter how long you think a program will take to write, it will take you longer. If you’re wiser and try to buy a finished program from somebody else, you’ll find the program works worse than advertised, its manual is missing or unintelligible, and you must modify the program to meet your personal needs.
Data_entry If you figure out how to use the program, your next torture is to type the data you want the program to process. The typing is sheer drudgery, but you must do it.
Worthwhile? Those headaches are just the beginning of what can become an extended nightmare. Buying a computer starts by being exciting but quickly becomes nerve-racking.
Eventually, you’ll pass that nerve-racking transition stage and be thrilled. That painful transition is worth the effort if you plan to use the computer a lot. If you plan to use a computer just occasionally, you’d be better off not buying a computer at all: continue doing your work manually.
Promises Salespeople wanting you to buy fancy hardware or software say “it will be great”, but computer stuff never turns out as good as promised.
For example, here’s the tale of the woman who was married 3 times but remained a virgin:
Her first husband, on his wedding night, discovered he was impotent.
Her second husband, on his wedding night, decided he was gay.
Her third husband was a computer salesman who spent the whole night saying how great it was going to be. Computer salesmen make great promises but don’t deliver.
Here’s the story of the programmer who died and went to Heaven’s gate, guarded by St. Peter, who let the programmer choose between Heaven and Hell:
The programmer peeked at Heaven and saw angels singing boring songs. He peeked at Hell and saw a beach full of beautiful bodies sunbathing and frolicking, so he chose Hell. Suddenly the beach vanished, and he was
dragged to a chamber of eternal torture. When he asked “What happened to the beach?”, the devil replied “Oh, that was just the demo.”
Hot technologies look temptingly beautiful; but when you try to experience them, you’ ll have a devil of a time!
A computer has several parts. Smartphones and tablets are simple, but bigger computers are more confusing. Let’s look at the biggest types.
Tower computer’s parts
A tower computer’s main part is the box called the system unit, which is a tower that’s 15 inches tall (and 15 inches from front to back) but just 7 inches wide.
7 cables Out of the system unit’s rear come 7 cables.
One of those cables is the power cord. It goes to a source of electricity (the electrical outlet socket in the room’s wall — or a power strip connected to that outlet). That cable feeds power to the computer.
One cable goes to the keyboard, which looks like a typewriter’s keyboard. To send a message to the computer, type the message on the keyboard. A standard computer keyboard contains 104 keys, which let you type all the letters of the alphabet, all the digits, all the punctuation symbols, and other symbols too. Some of the keys are for editing: they help you edit what you typed.
One cable goes to the monitor, which looks like a TV set: it contains a screen that shows the words you typed, the computer’s answers, and pictures.
One cable goes to the mouse, which is a small box about the size of a pack of cigarettes. If you slide the mouse across your desk, an arrow moves across your monitor’s screen; so to move the screen’s arrow, slide the mouse! To manipulate an object on the monitor’s screen, slide the mouse until the screen’s arrow moves to that object; then press the mouse’s left button.
One cable goes to the printer, which is a box that prints on paper.
One cable goes to stereo speakers, so the computer can produce sound effects, play music, sing, and talk to you!
The final cable goes toward other computers (or a modem), to form a network (such as the Internet). That cable is called a network cable. If you’re accessing the Internet by dial-up, the network cable is an ordinary phone line (which goes to your wall’s phone jack); if you’re accessing the Internet by broadband instead, the network cable is a fattened phone line, called an Ethernet cable, which goes to a modem.
Altogether, the typical tower computer includes:
the system unit
a keyboard, monitor, mouse, printer, speakers, and cables from them to system unit
power cords from wall (or power strip) to the system unit, monitor, and printer
a network cable to let the computer communicate with other computers
Advertised price When you buy a tower computer, the advertised price includes most of those items: it typically includes the system unit, computer keyboard, mouse, and pair of stereo speakers. But the printer is usually excluded from the advertised price: it costs extra.
Does the advertised price include the monitor? To find out, read the ad carefully!
If you’re lucky, the ad _ says “monitor included”. If the ad says “monitor optional” instead, the monitor is not included in the advertised price and costs extra.
Extras If your computer is extra-fancy, 3 extra cables come out of the system unit:
A cable goes to a microphone (mike), which lets you feed sounds into the computer. If you talk and sing into the mike, the computer can make digital recordings of your speech and performance, analyze them, and react accordingly!
Acable goes to a scanner, which is a box that you can shove a sheet of paper into; the scanner reads what’s on the paper and tells the computer what the paper said. If you rip an article out of a newspaper
and feed it into the scanner, the scanner will transmit the newspaper’s article to the computer, so the computer can analyze what’s in the newspaper’s article and become a smarter computer! If you feed a photo into the scanner, the scanner will transmit the photo to the computer, and the photo will appear on the computer’s screen.
A cable goes to a digital camera, which takes photos and feeds them to the computer.
Summary In a typical tower computer, the main box is called the system unit, from which cables run out to other computer devices, called external peripherals, such as the keyboard, monitor, mouse, printer, speakers, and — if your system is fancy —a microphone, scanner, and digital camera.
Ports On the system unit’s back wall, you’ll see many sockets to plug cables into. Each of those sockets is called a port. Here’s what the 11 most important ports look like (on a traditional tower computer):
Whose cable goesto port Port’s name keyboard keyboard port
Port's appearance circle, with 5 round pinholes in it
monitor video port D shape, with 15 round pinholes in it
modern printer, camera, or mouse USB port rectangular hole with 4 wires in it traditional printer parallel printer LPT1 port D shape, with 25 round pinholes in it traditional mouse PS/2 mouse port circle, with 6 round pinholes in it 9-pin serial COM1 port D shape, with 9 pins in it
square hole (4 wires in it) labeled “PHONE” square hole (4 wires in it) labeled “LINE” slightly widened square hole (8 wires in it)
very old mouse
phone on your desk phone jack phone jack on room’s wall modem port another computer or fast Internet RJ-45 Ethernet port
speakers microphone
speaker jack microphone jack
big round pinhole, next to loudspeaker picture big round pinhole, labeled “MIC”
Traditionally, all those ports are on the system unit’s back wall; but if your system unit is modern, some of those ports are on the system unit’s front wall instead, so you can reach them more easily.
Unfortunately, the speaker jack has the same shape as the microphone jack. Make sure you don’t mix them up! If you accidentally plug a speaker into the microphone jack, you’ll hear a loud buzz!
The phone jack has the same shape as the modem port, but many computers still work even if you mix up those ports.
All the other ports are safer: they have different shapes to prevent mix-ups.
A connector (a port or a cable’s end) that has pins sticking out of it is called male (because the pins look like little penises). A connector that has holes instead is called female (because it’s eager to have a male connector plugged into it).
Setup Setting up the computer is easy! Just plug the cables into the components and ports, and you’re done!
Inside the system unit
The system unit is a magical box you’ll probably never need to open. But someday, you'll get curious about what’s inside.
How to peek Here’s how to peek inside the system unit (of a tower computer or traditional desktop computer).
Make sure the computer’s turned off.
Remove the screws from the 4 corners of the system unit’s back wall. Notice how big those screws are. Remove any other screws that size from the back wall’s edges.
Then remove the system unit’s cover:
If the unit’s a tower, pull the cover back slightly, then lift it.
If the unit’s a traditional desktop that’s not a tower, slide the cover forward — or if it refuses, try sliding the cover back — then lift it slightly.
If the cover doesn’t quite come off, jiggle it slightly, and also double-check whether you’ve removed all the screws holding it in place.
Finally, peek into the system unit and admire the goodies within! To be safe, avoid touching them.
Buying: how to shop 17
Circuit boards Inside the system unit, you see several green plastic boards, called circuit boards (because they have electric circuits on tjhem). On each circuit board, you see many black rectangular objects, called chips: each chip contains a miniature electronic circuit inside!
Mobo The biggest circuit board is called the motherboard (or, more briefly, mobo). It’s about the size of sheet of paper (8'2" x 11"). In the typical desktop computer (which is a tower), the mobo is vertical, attached to the tower’s right edge.
CPU On the mobo, the biggest chip is the one that does most of the thinking. That chip is called the central processing unit (CPU). It’s also called the microprocessor. A standard computer uses a brand of microprocessor called a Pentium, manufactured by an intelligent California company called Intel. Modern Pentiums are called Core.
In big, ancient computers, the thinking is done by a gigantic collection of chips working together, instead of a single microprocessor chip. That collection is called the processor. The term microprocessor was invented by folks amazed that a processor could be made small enough to fit on a single chip.
Expansion cards Besides the motherboard, the system unit contains smaller circuit boards (called expansion cards) that snap into slots in the motherboard.
The most important expansion card is the video card. It manages the monitor. It includes the video port, which attaches to the cable that comes from the monitor.
Another expansion card is the sound card. It manages the stereo speakers and microphone and attaches to the cables that comes from them.
Another expansion card is the modem (pronounced “mode em’’). It manages phone signals and attaches to cables that come from the phone and the phone jack.
If your computer is part of a local-area network, your computer includes a network interface card (NIC), which attaches to the network cable that comes from the network’s other computers.
The keyboard does not have its own expansion card. Instead, the keyboard’s cable plugs directly into the motherboard.
Memory The 4 most popular kinds of memory are ROM chips, RAM chips, flash memory, and hard disks.
ROM chips remember info permanently. Even if you turn off the computer’s power, ROM chips continue to remember what they’ve been told. The info in the ROM chips cannot be destroyed or edited. The most important ROM chips are on the motherboard.
RAM chips remember info temporarily. They’re electronic scratchpads that the CPU uses to store temporary reminders. For example, they remember what problem the computer’s working on at the moment. They get erased when you switch to a different computer problem or turn the computer off.
Flash memory combines the best cous of ROM uly RAM:
Flash memory has great capacity (it holds more info than ROM or RAM) but works slower. Flash memory is called a flash drive or solid-state drive (SSD) when it’s in a normal computer (but not when it’s in a cell phone).
Hard disks can hold even more info than flash memory and cost less but work slower. They’re in old computers (invented before flash memory) and in computers for big businesses (who want to store more info than flash memory can hold).
Older types of memory, which have become less popular, are floppy disks, compact disks (CD), and digital versatile disks (DVD).
Power supply The power cord comes from your room’s wall and goes into the back of the system unit. Look inside the
18 Buying: how to shop
system unit, at the back wall, where the power cord goes in. There you see, inside the system unit, a big metal box, called the power supply.
If you look in a tower, the power supply is usually at the back wall’s top.
If you stand in front of a desktop computer and look down into it, so you see an aerial view, the power supply is usually in the back right corner.
The power supply is an AC/DC transformer: it converts the alternating current (coming from your office’s wall) to the direct current that your computer requires.
Laptop computer’s parts The typical laptop computer uses a clamshell design: it opens, like a clamshell, to reveal 2 parts:
The bottom part (*4" high) contains the main system-unit circuitry with a built-in keyboard, built-in pair of stereo speakers, built-in touchpad (square pad you rub with your finger instead of using a mouse), and built-in
rechargeable battery.
The top part (’4" thick) pries up to become a screen (made of the same materials used in screens of pocket calculators and digital watches).
The laptop computer can get power from its built-in battery; but if you plug the computer into a wall’s electrical outlet, the computer will use the wall’s power instead while the battery recharges.
Once the computer gets electrical power, you can operate the computer without attaching anything to it. But the computer includes ports to let you attach optional extras. To its USB ports, you can attach a mouse (to use instead of the awkward built-in touchpad) and printer. You can use the computer’s other ports to attach headphones (to use instead of the built-in speakers) and network cables.
Dealing with dealers
To buy a computer device (smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop), where should you go? You have many choices. Enjoy the hunt!
Stores If you live near a Best Buy store, go there first, because:
Best Buy sells a wide variety of computer devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops) from many manufacturers. You can freely touch & try all those devices in the store. Prices are discounted. At many Best Buy stores, the staff is knowledgeable & helpful. To get the most help, visit during the middle of the day in the middle of the week; avoid evenings & weekends.
After visiting Best Buy, visit other stores.
Walmart is especially good for finding cheaper computers & devices. Sam’s Club requires a paid membership but often gives bigger discounts. Costco is more pleasant than Sam’s Club but prices are usually higher. Staples gives fewer choices but sometimes gives a good deal.
Target sometimes gives big discounts on devices by Apple.
Stores that repair computers often give discounts on old used computers. Stores owned by Verizon often give discounts on smartphones. Microsoft used to have helpful stores but closed them all.
Micro Center is a popular chain of 25 superstores (in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Texas, and California).
Like Best Buy, it’s a pleasant place to browse, since the staff is friendly and the selection is huge. The typical Micro Center store contains 45,000 square feet displaying 36,000 products. A gigantic room is devoted to books, a
gigantic room is devoted to Macs, a gigantic room is devoted to I/O devices (such as printers and scanners), etc. To find the store nearest you, phone 800- 743-7537.
Mail order
Sometimes you can find lower prices on the Internet, from those dealers and also directly from the manufacturers (such as HP and Lenovo). State & federal laws keep changing about whether mail-order sales are subject to sales tax.
Before buying mail-order, ask whether the product’s in stock, how long the dealer will take to fill your order, how it will ship, and what the shipping charge is: many dealers overcharge! Since products are improved often, check whether the dealer is selling you the newest version.
Price changes
Each week, prices change, especially on Sundays, as advertised in Sunday newspapers. Bigger discounts are available near holidays & celebrations (Presidents Day, July 4, Thanksgiving, Christmas, back-to-school, and graduation). When a manufacturer (such as Apple) announces a new version of a product, the previous version drops in price.
What's missing? Before you pay, find out what the price does not include. Examples:
The price probably does not include a printer. The printer’s price probably doesn’t include a cable to go from the printer to the computer.
If you’re buying an Apple smartphone now, the advertised price probably doesn’t include a charger, which you must pay extra for, to give the phone electricity.
If you’re buying a tower, the price might not include a screen (monitor).
The advertised price might include an inferior processor, memory, or screen unless you pay an upcharge.
If the price seems to include good software, that software might be just a trial version that stops working after a month or two.
If you dislike what you bought, you might have just 15 days to return it, and you might also have to pay a 15% restocking fee.
If you need help using your device (because it doesn’t work or you can’t find the instructions or you don’t understand them), the free help might be limited to just the first month and to just a few minutes of tech-support time, or maybe you’re unable to contact any tech-support people at all.
Protect yourself
Some dealers offer price-protection: after you buy, if you find the same product at a lower price within 30 days, your dealer will refund the difference.
Before you buy, ask questions about the product’s abilities, to make sure it will do what you expect. Tell the dealer what hardware and software you own, and ask the dealer whether the product’s compatible with your system.
The typical product comes in a cardboard box. On the box’s back (or on some other side), you'll usually see a list of the system requirements. That’s a list of what hardware and software you must already own to make that product work with your computer.
Use your credit card Pay by credit card rather than a check.
If you pay by credit card and have an unresolved complaint about what you bought, Federal laws say that the credit-card company can’t bill you! Moreover, if a mail-order company takes your money, spends it, and then goes bankrupt before shipping your goods, the credit-card company gets
stuck, not you!
Some credit cards double the manufacturer’s warranty, so a “one-year warranty” becomes a two-year warranty! Does your credit card give you that warranty extension? Ask!
Read the fine print
When reading an ad, make sure you read the fine print at the bottom of the ad. It contains many disclaimers, which admit that the deal isn’t quite as good as the rest of the ad implies.
Asterisk In the middle of an ad, next to an exciting price or feature or warranty, you’ll often see an asterisk (*). The asterisk means: “for details, read the fine print at the bottom of the ad”. That fine print contains disclaimers that will disappoint you. In long multipage ads, the fine print is often buried at the bottom of just one of the ad’s pages, far away from the page where the asterisk appeared, in the hope that you won’t notice the fine print.
So if you see what looks like a great deal, but the deal has an asterisk next to it, the asterisk means “the deal is not really as great as we imply”.
Fine- print phrases In many computer ads, the fine print
contains these phrases....
“Monitor optional” means this price does not include a monitor. The monitor costs extra, even though the ad shows a photo of a computer with a monitor.
“Upgrade price” means you get this price just if you already own an older version of this stuff.
“With system purchase” means you get this price just if you’re stupid enough to also buy an overpriced full computer system at the same time.
“Reflects cash discount” means you get this price just if you’re stupid enough to pay cash instead of using a credit card. (By paying cash, you can’t complain to a credit-card company if you get ripped you off.) If you use a credit card, the seller will charge you about 3% above the advertised price.
“Includes rebate” means you must pay more, then request a rebate from the manufacturer. (You’ll probably never get that rebate, since you’ll forget to ask for the rebate form or forget to mail the rebate form, or the rebate form will have already expired, or you’ll lose the receipt or code number you must mail with the rebate form to get the rebate, or you can’t mail the receipt because you already used it to apply for a rebate on a second item you bought
simultaneously, or the manufacturer loses your paperwork or is a jerk who waits many months to send the rebate or goes bankrupt.)
“Manufacturer's warranty” means that if the stuff breaks, don’t ask the seller for help. Phone the original manufacturer instead (who’ll probably ignore you).
“Refurbished” or “factory serviced” means another customer bought this stuff, didn’t like it, and returned it to the factory, which examined it and thinks it’s good enough to resell (after jiggling it a bit), so now you re getting stuck with this lemon.
“Open box” means the computer was on display, so other customers fiddled with it and dirtied it, and its box & instructions might be missing.
“For in-stock items” means that although the seller promised to ship immediately, the seller won’t if you order stuff that’s not yet in the warehouse.
“25% restocking fee” means that if you return the stuff, you won’t get your money back. Instead, the seller will keep 25% of the price (as a restocking fee) and return just 75% to you. Moreover, you’ll have to pay the cost of shipping the stuff back.
Request discounts
To encourage a store to give you a discount, mention low prices from competitors and agree to buy many items at once. Say that if you don’t get a discount, you’ll shop elsewhere. Many stores do price-matching: they’ll match the price of any other local store, though not the prices of mail-order dealers. Some stores let salespeople give 10% discounts, which are subtracted from the salesperson’s commission.
Some suppliers (such as Apple and Microsoft) give educational discounts to schools, teachers, and some college students. To find out whether you can get educational discounts, ask those suppliers, your town’s computer stores, and your school’s administrators.
Buying: how to shop 19
The computer is full of chips. Let’s examine them.
Chip technology
If you unscrew the system unit (the box containing the CPU and memory) and peek at the circuitry inside, you’ll see a green plastic board, on which is printed an electrical wiring diagram.
Since the diagram’s printed in copper (instead of ink), the diagram conducts electricity. It isn’t just a diagram of an electrical circuit; it is an electrical circuit!
The green plastic board — including the circuit printed on it — is called a printed-circuit board (PC board). Each wire that’s stamped onto the PC board is called a trace.
The typical computer contains several PC boards.
Motherboard 2 babies
In your computer, the largest and most important PC board is called the motherboard (or, more briefly, mobo).
In a smartphone or tablet or laptop or traditional laptop, the motherboard lies flat, on the system unit’s bottom.
In an all-in-one computer, the motherboard is vertical, behind the screen.
In a tower computer, the motherboard is vertical, attached to the tower’s right edge.
The other PC boards are smaller. Those little baby boards (about the size of a postcard) are called PC cards.
The typical motherboard has several slots on it. Into each slot, you can put a PC card.
Caterpillars
On each PC board, you’ll see black rectangles. If you look closely at a black rectangle, you’ll see it has tiny legs, so it looks like a black caterpillar.
The “caterpillars” come in many sizes. In a typical computer, the shortest caterpillars are % of an inch long and have 7 pairs of legs; the longest are 2 inches long and have more legs.
Though each black caterpillar has legs, it doesn’t move. It’s permanently mounted on the PC board.
Each leg is made of tin and called a pin.
Hidden inside the caterpillar is a metal square, called a chip, which is very tiny. The typical chip is just an eighth of an inch long, an eighth of an inch wide, and a hundredth of an inch thick! On that tiny metal chip are etched thousands of microscopic electronic circuits! Since all those circuits are on the chip, the chip’s called an integrated circuit (IC).
4 purposes Each chip serves a purpose.
If the chip’s purpose is to “think”, it’s called a processor chip. If the chip’s purpose is to “remember” info, it’s called a memory chip.
If the chip helps devices communicate with each other, it’s an interface chip. If the chip acts as a slave & helper to other chips, it’s a support chip.
So a chip is either a processor chip, a memory chip, an interface chip, or a support chip — or it’s a combination chip that accomplishes several purposes.
20 Buying: chips
How chips are designed
To design a chip, the manufacturer hires an artist, who draws on paper a big sketch of what circuits to put onto the chip. It helps if the artist also has a degree in engineering — and knows how to use another computer to help draw all the lines.
After the big sketch is drawn, it’s photographed.
Have you ever photographed your friend and asked a photography store for an “enlargement”? To produce a chip, the chip’s manufacturer does the opposite: it photographs the sketch but produces a “reduction” to just an eighth of an inch on each side! Whereas a photo of your friend is made on treated paper, the tiny photo of the chip’s circuitry consists of metal and semiconductors on treated silicon, so the photo’s an actual working circuit! That photographic process is called photolithography (or photolith).
Many copies of that photo are made on a large silicon wafer. Then a cutter
slices the wafer into hundreds of chips. Each chip is put into its own caterpillar. The caterpillar’s purpose is just to hide and protect the chip inside it; the caterpillar’s just a strange-looking package containing the chip. Since the caterpillar’s a package that has 2 rows of legs, it’s called a dual in-line package (DIP). That DIP’s only purpose is to house the chip. Computer hobbyists always talk about chips & DIPs, serve chips & dips at parties, and are called “dipchips”.
Buying chips
If you ask a computer dealer to sell you a chip, the dealer also gives you the chip’s DIP (the entire caterpillar).
Since you’ve asked for a chip but also received a DIP, you might think the caterpillar (the DIP) is the chip. But the caterpillar’s not the chip; the chip hides inside the caterpillar.
The typical caterpillar-and-chip costs $3, but you might pay a different amount, depending on how fancy the chip’s circuitry is.
You can get chips mail-order from JOR Computer Devices in California, phone 800-538-5000 or 650-625-1400.
How chips chat
The chip inside the caterpillar acts as the caterpillar’s brain. The caterpillar also contains a “nervous system”, made of thin wires that run from the brain (the chip) to the legs (the pins). The wires in the caterpillar’s nervous system are very thin: each wire’s diameter is about half of a thousandth of an inch.
If one caterpillar wants to send electrical signals to another caterpillar, the signals go from the first caterpillar’s brain (chip) through the caterpillar’s nervous system to its legs (pins). Each pin is attached to a trace (wire) on the PC board. The signals travel through those traces, which carry the signals across the PC board until the signals reach the second caterpillar’s pins. Then the signals travel through the second caterpillar’s nervous system to that caterpillar’s brain (chip).
Binary code
To communicate with each other, the caterpillars use a secret code. Each code is a series of 1’s and 0’s. For example, the code for the letter A is 01000001; the code for B is 01000010; the code for the number 5 is 101; the code for 6 is 110.
That’s called the binary code, because each digit in the code has just two possibilities: it’s either a 1 or a 0. In the code, each 1 or 0 is called a binary digit. A binary digit is called a bit. So in the computer, each bit is a 1 ora 0.
When a caterpillar wants to send a message to another caterpillar, it sends the message in binary code.
To send a 1, the caterpillar sends a high voltage through the wires. To send a 0, the caterpillar sends little or no voltage through the wires.
To send the number 5, whose code number is 101, the caterpillar sends a high voltage (1), then a low voltage (0), then a high voltage (1). To send those
three bits (1, 0, then 1), the caterpillar can send them in sequence through the same leg (pin); or for faster transmission, the caterpillar can send them through three pins simultaneously: the first pin sends 1, while the next pin sends 0 and the third pin sends 1.
The speed at which bits are sent is measured in
bits per second (bps).
The computer system contains memory chips, which remember what problem the CPU (the computer’s brain) is working on.
You want 3 kinds of memory chips: flash memory.
The RAM chips remember info just temporarily.
RAM, ROM, and
The ROM chips remember info permanently. Flash-memory chips are a compromise: they remember info semi-permanently.
Let’s begin by looking at RAM chips.
If a chip remembers info just temporarily, it’s called a random- access memory chip (RAM chip). When you buy RAM chips, they contain no info yet; you tell the CPU what info to put into them. Later, you can make the CPU erase that info and insert new info instead. The RAM chips hold info just temporarily: when you turn the computer’s power off, the RAM chips are automatically erased.
Whenever the CPU tries to solve a problem, the CPU stores the problem in the RAM chips, temporarily. There it also stores all instructions on how to solve the problem; the instructions are called the program.
If the computer doesn’t have enough RAM chips to hold an entire problem or program, you (or a programmer) must split the problem or program into several shorter ones instead and tell the CPU to work on each short problem temporarily.
How RAM is measured
A character is any symbol you can type on the keyboard, such as a letter or digit or punctuation mark or blank space. Examples:
The word HAT consists of 3 characters. The phrase MR. POE consists of 7 characters: M, R, the period, the space, P, O, and E. The phrase LOVE 2 KISS
U consists of 13 characters.
Instead of saying “character”, hungry programmers say byte. So the phrase LOVE 2 KISS U consists of 13 bytes. If you store that phrase in the RAM, that phrase occupies 13 bytes of the RAM.
RAM chips are manufactured by a process that involves doubling. The most popular unit of RAM is “2 bytes times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2”, which is 1024 bytes, which is called a kilobyte. It’s about a quarter as many characters as you get on a typewritten page (assuming the page is single-spaced with one-inch margins and elite type). The abbreviation for kilobyte is K. For example, if a salesperson says an old computer has a “512K RAM”, the salesperson means the main circuitry includes enough RAM chips to hold 512 kilobytes of information, which is slightly over 512,000 bytes.
A megabyte is 1024 kilobytes. Since a kilobyte is 1024 bytes, a megabyte is “1024 times 1024” bytes, which is 1,048,576 bytes altogether, which is slightly more than a million bytes. It’s about how much you can fit in a 250-page book (assuming the book has single-spaced typewritten pages). The abbreviation for megabyte is meg or M.
A gigabyte (pronounced “gig a bite”) is 1024 megabytes. It’s slightly more than a billion bytes. The abbreviation for gigabyte is gig or G.
A terabyte is 1024 gigabytes. It’s slightly more than a trillion bytes. The abbreviation for terabyte is T.
20 66 2 6
To honor the words “kilobyte”, “megabyte”, “gigabyte”, and “terabyte”, programmers name their dogs Killer Byte, Make A Byte, Giggle Byte, and Terror Byte.
Rows of RAM chips
In a primitive old microcomputer (such as the Commodore 64),
the RAM is a row of eight chips on the motherboard. That row of chips holds a total of 64 kilobytes (64K). That row of chips is called a 64K chip set. Each chip in that set is called a “64K chip”, but you need a whole row of those 64K chips to produce a 64K RAM.
If your computer is slightly fancier (such as the Apple 2c), it has two rows
of 64K chips. The two rows together total 128K. If your computer is even fancier, it has many rows of 64K chips. For
example, your computer might have 4 rows of 64K chips. Since each row is a 64K RAM, the 4 rows together total 256K. During the 1980’s, computer engineers invented 256K and 1M chips.
If your computer has very little RAM, you can try to enlarge the RAM by adding extra rows of RAM chips to the motherboard. But if the motherboard’s already full, you must buy an extra PC card to put the extra chips on. That extra PC card is called a RAM memory card.
Parity chip The original IBM PC contained an extra chip in each row, so each row contained 9 chips instead of 8. The row’s ninth chip is called the parity chip. It double-checks the work done by the other 8 chips, to make sure they’re all working correctly! So for an original IBM PC (or imitations of it), you must buy 9 chips to fill a row.
RAM sticks
If your computer is modern and you want to insert an extra row of RAM chips, you do not have to insert 8 or 9 separate chips into the motherboard. Instead, you can buy a RAM stick (tiny memory card) that contains all 8 or 9 chips and just pop the whole strip into the computer’s motherboard, in one blow.
If the stick is classic, it contains a single row of chips, pops into one of the motherboard’s slots, and is called a Single In-line Memory Module (SIMM).
If the strip is modern, it contains two rows of chips (one row on each side of the strip) and is called a Dual In-line Memory Module (DIMM). Some computers use SIMMs containing a set of just 2, 3, or 4 chips. That set of special chips imitates 8 or 9 normal chips.
A nanosecond is a billionth of a secon The typical SIMM contains chips that are fast: they retrieve info in 60 nanoseconds. Some SIMMs and DIMMs contain chips that are even faster: 10 nanoseconds.
Dynamic versus sfatic
A RAM chip is either dynamic or static.
If it’s dynamic, it stores data for just 64 milliseconds. After the 64 milliseconds, the electrical charges that represent the data dissipate and become too weak to detect.
When you buy a PC board containing dynamic RAM chips, the PC board
also includes a refresh circuit. The refresh circuit automatically reads the data from the dynamic RAM chips, then rewrites the data onto the chips
before 64 milliseconds go by. Every 64 milliseconds, the refresh circuit reads the data from the chips and rewrites the data, so that the data stays refreshed.
If a chip is static instead of dynamic, the electrical charge never dissipates, so you don’t need a refresh circuit. (But you must still keep the power turned on.)
In the past, computer designers used just static RAM because they feared dynamic RAM’s refresh circuit wouldn’t work. But now refresh circuits are reliable, and the most popular kind of RAM is dynamic.
Dynamic RAM is called DRAM (pronounced “dee ram”). Static RAM is called SRAM (pronounced “ess ram’’).
Buying: chips 21
Faster circuitry The circuitry on SIMM and DIMM cards has improved, to let a stream of data get from the memory card to the CPU chip faster. Such improvements have fancy names: In 1987 came the first improvement, called Fast Page Mode (FPM). In 1995 came Extended Data Output (EDO), which went even faster.
In 1996 came Synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), which went even faster. In 1999 came Rambus DRAM (RDRAM), which went even faster.
In 2000 came Double Data Rate SDRAM (DDR SDRAM),
which had 184 pins and went about as fast as RDRAM but cost less.
In 2003 came DDR2 SDRAM (240 pins, transfers twice as fast as DDR).
In 2007 came DDR3 SDRAM (240 pins, transfers twice as fast as DDR2). In 2014 came DDR4 SDRAM (288 pins, transfers twice as fast as DDR3). In 2020 came DDRS5 SDRAM (288 pins, transfers twice as fast as DDR4).
If you want to buy an extra SIMM or DIMM to put in your computer, make sure you buy the same kind already in your computer.
How much RAM?
The original IBM PC came with just 16K of RAM, but you could add extra RAM to it. To run modern Windows software, you need at least 4 gigabytes of RAM.
Prices
If you tell HP to custom-build a computer for you, HP typically charges $10 per extra gigabyte of RAM. For example:
To switch from 8G of DDR4 SRAM to 12G, add $40. To switch from 8G of DDR4 SRAM to 16G, add $80.
But to switch from 16G of DDR4 SRAM to 32G, add just $110 (not $160).
ROM, PROM, flash
If a chip remembers info permanently, it’s called a read-only memory chip (ROM chip), because you can read the info but can’t change it. The ROM chip contains permanent, eternal truths and facts put there by the manufacturer, and it remembers that info forever, even if you turn off the power.
Here’s the difference between RAM and ROM:
RAM chips remember, temporarily, info supplied by you.
ROM chips remember, forever, info supplied by the manufacturer.
A traditional computer includes many RAM chips (arranged in rows) but just a few ROM chips.
What Kind of info is in ROM?
In a traditional computer, one of the ROM chips contains instructions that tell the CPU what to do first when you turn the power on. Those instructions are called the ROM bootstrap, because they help the computer system start itself going and “pull itself up by its own bootstraps”.
22 Buying: chips
In a traditional computer, that ROM chip also contains instructions that help the CPU transfer information from the keyboard to the screen and printer. Those instructions are called the ROM operating system or the ROM basic input-output system (ROM BIOS).
Ina traditional IBM-compatible PC, the motherboard contains a ROM BIOS chip. That chip contains the ROM BIOS and also the ROM bootstrap. If your computer’s made by IBM, that chip is typically designed by IBM; if your computer’s made by a company imitating IBM, that chip is an imitation
designed by a company such as Phoenix. Such a chip designed by Phoenix is called a Phoenix ROM BIOS chip. Other companies that designed ROM BIOS chips for clones are Quadtel (which was recently bought by Phoenix), Award (which was recently bought by Phoenix), and American Megatrends Incorporated (AMI) (which remains independent).
How ROM chips are made
The info in a ROM chip is said to be burned into the chip. To burn in the info, the manufacturer can use two methods.
One method is to burn the info into the ROM chip while the chip’s being made. A ROM chip produced by that method is called a custom ROM chip.
An alternate method is to make a ROM chip that contains no info but can be fed info later. Such a ROM chip is called a programmable ROM chip (PROM). To feed it info later, you attach it to a device called a PROM burner, which copies info from a RAM to the PROM.
Info burned into the PROM can’t be erased, unless the PROM’s a special kind: an erasable PROM (EPROM). You can buy 3 types of erasable PROMs:
An ultraviolet-erasable PROM (UV-EPROM) gets erased by shining an
intense ultraviolet light at it for 30 minutes (or leaving the chip in sunlight for a week). That technique erases the entire chip.
An electrically erasable PROM (EEPROM) gets erased by sending it an electrical shock for 4 milliseconds. (A millisecond is a thousandth of a second). That technique erases a few bytes at once but not the whole chip.
Flash memory gets erased by sending it an electrical shock for 1 millisecond. That technique erases a whole 64-kilobyte block at once, “in a flash”. It’s the most popular type of erasable PROM. It’s used in digital cameras (to store pictures), cell phones, and reprogrammable BIOS chips. If the flash memory pretends to be an extra hard disk & drive, it’s called a solid-state drive (SSD) and runs faster than a traditional hard disk & drive. If you tell HP to custom-build a computer for you, HP charges about 25 cents per extra gigabyte of SSD. For example:
To switch from 128G SSD to 256G, add $40.
To switch from 256G SSD to 512G, add $60.
To switch from 512G SSD to 1024G (which is 1T), add $90.
To switch from 1T to 2T, add $200,
A solid-state drive that plugs into the system unit’s USB port is called a USB flash drive (and is about the size of your thumb); it costs $6 for 16 gigabytes, $8 for 32 gigabytes, $10 for 64 gigabytes, $15 for 128 gigabytes, at Best Buy.
After you erase an erasable PROM, you can feed it new info.
Electronic devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops) now tend to include flash memory instead of old- fashioned ROM, because flash memory is more flexible: it can be upgraded more easily whenever software improvements are needed.
CPU
The part of the computer that thinks (“the brain”) is called the processor (or central processing unit or CPU).
In a maxicomputer or minicomputer, the processor consists of several chips, which are processor chips.
In a microcomputer, the processor is so small it consists of just a single chip, called a microprocessor. It sits on the motherboard. Yes, in a typical microcomputer, the part that does all the thinking is just a tiny square of metal, less than '4" on each side!
Intel’s designs
The typical microprocessor uses a design invented by Intel. Intel has gradually improved that design by putting more circuitry on the chip:
Chip’s name Year invented Transistors on chip
29,000 transistors 134,000 transistors 275,000 transistors
Intel 8088 1979 Intel 286 (also called 80286) 1982
Intel 386 (also called 80386) 1985 Intel 486 (also called 80486) 1989 1,200,000 transistors Intel Pentium 1993 3,100,000 transistors
The Intel Pentium could have been called the “Intel 586’, but Intel called it the “Pentium” instead so Intel could trademark the name and prevent companies from copying it. It’s the first computer chip that sounds like a breakfast cereal: “Hey, kids, to put zip into your life, try Penti-yumms. They build strong computer bodies, 5 ways!”
The Intel 8088 was used in the original IBM PC and the IBM PC XT. The Intel 286 was used in a computer called the IBM AT.
The 8088, 286, 386, and 486 chips are all outdated, no longer actively marketed. All Windows computers contain Pentiums — or improved Pentiums, or imitations made by Intel’s competitors.
Gigahertz
In an army, when soldiers march, they’re kept in step by a drill sergeant who yells out, rhythmically, “Hup, two, three, four! Hup, two, three, four! Hup, two, three, four!”
Like a soldier, the microprocessor takes the next step in obeying your program just when told by the computer’s “drill sergeant”, which is called the computer clock. The clock rhythmically sends out a pulse of electricity; each time the clock sends out a pulse, the microprocessor does one more step in obeying your program.
The clock sends out billions of pulses every second, so the microprocessor accomplishes billions of steps in your program every second!
Each pulse is called a clock cycle. The clock’s speed is measured in cycles per seconds. A “cycle per second” is called a hertz (Hz), to honor German physicist Heinrich Hertz.
A “million cycles per second” is called a megahertz (MHz).
1000 megahertz is called a gigahertz (GHz). It’s a billion hertz. Intel has invented fast Pentiums that go at 1, 2, 3, 4, and even 5.3 gigahertz.
Slower than a Pentium
The Pentium’s an amazing chip: while it thinks about one part of your program, it simultaneously starts getting the next part of your program ready for processing. That chip’s ability to do several things simultaneously is called parallel processing.
The Pentium is smarter than old chips (the 8088, 286, 386, and 486): the Pentium can perform more tasks simultaneously; it performs more parallel processing.
Variant chips Old chips had variants:
The Intel 8088 came in 2 versions. One version (called simply the “8088”) went slightly slower than the other version (called the 8086).
The Intel 386 came in 2 versions. One version (the 386SX) went slightly slower than the other version (the 386DX).
The Intel 486 came in 2 versions. One version (the 486SX) went slower than the other version (the 486DX). Moreover, the 486DX came in 3 varieties: the original 486DX, the 486DX2, and the 486DX4.
The Pentium comes in many versions. Here are the most popular, listed from slowest to fastest:
Version Invented Comment
Pentium classic 1993 Pentium Pro is a faster variant
Pentium MMX 1995 understands 57 more instructions than classic Pentium 2 1997 resembles Pentium MMX but 30% faster Pentium 3 1999 understands 70 more instructions
Pentium 4 2000 Pentium 4M uses less electricity, for laptops Pentium D 2005 D means dual: caterpillar contains 2 chips Pentium Core Duo 2006 1 chip contains 2 cores, so acts like 2 chips Pentium Core 2 Duo 2006 1 chip contains 2 cores, so acts like 2 chips Pentium Core i3 2010 now | chip contains 2 or 4 cores
Pentium Core i5 2010 crude version in 2009, but now 4 or 6 cores Pentium Core i7 2010 crude version in 2008, but now 4 or 8 cores Pentium Core i9 2017 now | chip contains 8 cores
To help low-income folks, Intel eventually decided to make a cheaper Pentium, called Celeron. It goes slower.
The first Celeron, invented in 1998, was a cheaper, slower version of the Pentium 2. The newest Celeron is a cheaper, slower version of the Pentium Core 2 Duo.
For very low-income folks, Intel makes a version that’s even cheaper & slower, called the Atom.
What’s available
Intel stopped marketing the oldest chips (8086, 8088, 286, 386, 486 and oldest Pentiums). Modern computers use these new Pentiums: the Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9.
Here are prices of various Pentium chips:
Intel Pentium chip Cores Cache memory Gigahertz Price 6
Core i5-11400 12 megabytes 4.4GHz $170 Core 15-11600K 12 megabytes 4.9GHz $250
Core i7-11700 4.9GHz $319 Core i7-11700K 5.0GHz $350
Core i9-11900 5.2GHz $450 Core i9-11900K 5.3GHz $500 That chart shows the lowest price charged by resellers for a single chip in June 2021, according to Intel. By the time you read this, prices might be lower, since prices change frequently (about every 2 months). That chart also shows how much cache memory (fast-access internal memory) is included inside the Pentium chip.
If you tell HP to custom-build a computer for you, here’s what HP charges:
To switch from i3 to 15, add $100. To switch from i5 to 17, add $150.
16 megabytes 16 megabytes
16 megabytes 16 megabytes
To switch from i7 to 19, add $260.
Buying: chips 23
Imitations
Intel’s competitors imitate Intel’s chips. For example, these imitations go faster than Intel’s originals:
Intel’s chip Imitations
8088 (4.77 or 7.18 MHz) NEC’s V20 chip goes faster: 10 MHz. 8086 (8 or 10 MHz)
NEC’s V30 chip goes fast: 10 MHz.
Harris’s 286 goes faster: 16 & 20 MHz versions. 386 (16-33 MHz) AMD’s 386 goes faster: 40 MHz.
486 DX (25-100 MHz) AMD’s 486 goes faster: 66-120 MHz versions.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) makes Ryzen chips, which compete against Intel’s Pentium Core chips:
AMD Ryzen chip Cores Cache memory Gigahertz Price Ryzen 5 5600X 35 megabytes 4.6 GHz $299
Ryzen 7 5800X : 36 megabytes 4.7 GHz $449 Ryzen 9 5900X 12 70 megabytes 4.8 GHz $549 Ryzen 9 5950X 16 73 megabytes 4.9 GHz $799 That chart shows the price charged for a single chip in January 2021, according to Wikipedia.
Half-assed systems
While a chip waits for your commands, the chip accomplishes nothing useful during the wait: it just mumbles to itself.
286 (6-12 MHz)
To make full use of a fast Pentium, make sure you know what commands to give the computer. To let the chip reach its full potential, buy lots of RAM, big disk drives (or an SSD), and a quick printer. Otherwise, the Pentium will act as idiotic as if in the army: it will just “hurry up and then wait” for other parts of the system to catch up and tell it what to do next.
A mind’s a terrible thing to waste! To avoid wasting the computer’s mind (the CPU), make sure the other computer parts are good enough to match the CPU and keep it from waiting.
If you get suckered into buying a computer that has a fast Pentium chip but insufficient RAM, insufficient drives, and a slow printer, you’ve bought a computer that’s just half-fast: it’s half-assed.
Total cost
When you buy a computer, its advertised price includes a microprocessor, motherboard, and other goodies. Pay for the microprocessor separately just if you’re inventing your own computer, buying parts for a broken computer, or upgrading your computer by switching to a faster microprocessor & motherboard.
Though the microprocessor is cheap, the computer containing it can cost many hundreds or thousands of dollars. That’s because the microprocessor is just a tiny part of the computer. In addition to the microprocessor, you’!l want memory chips, interface chips, support chips, PC boards (to put the chips on), I/O devices (a keyboard, screen, printer, speaker, and mouse), disks, and software.
24 Buying: chips
Math coprocessor
Each Pentium chip includes math coprocessor circuitry, which handles advanced math fast. That circuitry can multiply & divide long numbers & decimals and compute square roots, logarithms, and trigonometry.
Primitive chips — the 8088, 8086, 286, 386SX, 386DX, and 486SX — do not include such circuitry.
To make a primitive chip do advanced math, you must feed the chip a program that teaches the chip how to break the advanced problem down into
a series of simpler problems. That program runs slowly — nearly 100 times slower than if a math coprocessor were present!
Here’s the only difference between a 486DX chip and a 486SX chip: The 486DX chip (and 486DX2 and 486DX4) includes math-coprocessor circuitry; the 486SX does not. Intel invented the 486DX, then later invented the 486SX by using this manufacturing technique: Intel took each 486DX
whose math coprocessor was faulty and called it a 486SX. So a 486SX is just a defective 486DX.
If your CPU lacks math-coprocessor circuitry (because your CPU is an 8088, 8086, 286, 386, or 486SX), here’s how to do math quickly: buy a math coprocessor chip. Put it next to the CPU chip on the motherboard. It contains the math-coprocessor circuitry that the CPU lacks.
Intel CPU Which Intel math coprocessor to buy 8088 or 8086 8087
287
387SX 387DX 487SX
Better yet, give up and buy a new computer, containing a Pentium!
Disks
Memory comes in 4 popular forms: RAM chips, ROM chips, flash-memory chips, and disks.
You already learned about RAM chips, ROM chips, and flash- memory chips. Let’s examine disks. Disks are becoming less popular (because chips are becoming cheaper than before), but many computers still use disks!
A computer disk is round, like a phonograph record.
Computers can handle 4 kinds of disks:
A floppy disk is made of flimsy material. It’s permanently encased in a sturdy, square dust jacket.
A hard disk is made of firmer material. It typically hides in your computer
permanently, unseen. ACD is the same kind of compact disk that plays music. A DVD is the same kind of digital video disk that plays movies.
Each kind has its own advantages and disadvantages. Floppy disks are the easiest to mail to your friends: just stick the floppy disk in an envelope, perhaps with some padding. Unfortunately, floppy disks work the most slowly, and they hold the least data: the typical floppy disk holds
about 1 megabyte, while the typical CD-ROM can hold many hundreds of megabytes, and the typical hard disk can hold a billion megabytes!
Hard disks work the fastest — over 20 times faster than the other kinds! But hard disks are also the most expensive. Moreover, they typically can’t be removed from your computer and so can’t be mailed to your friends.
CDs and DVDs are the best value: they cost less than 1¢ per megabyte to manufacture. But they have a frustrating limitation: the info on those disks is hard to edit. A DVD can hold more megabytes than a CD and therefore costs more to manufacture.
Computer experts argue about spelling. Some experts write “disk”, others write “disc”. Most manufacturers write “disk” when referring to floppy disks or hard disks
but write “disc” when referring to CDs & DVDs. To be more consistent, I'll always write “disk”, even when referring to CDs & DVDs.
Floppy disks
Ill start with floppy disks, because they’re the easiest to understand (though they’ve become less popular).
A floppy disk (or diskette) is round but comes permanently sealed in a square dust jacket. Don’t try to remove the floppy disk from its dust jacket. The floppy disk is as thin and flimsy as a sheet of paper but is protected by the sturdy, square jacket that encases it.
2 standard sizes Floppy disks come in 3 standard sizes.
The most popular size is called a 3/2-inch floppy disk, because it comes in a square jacket that’s about 3 inches on each side. (Each side of the jacket is slightly more than 3 inches, and the disk’s diameter is slightly /ess.)
An older size, used just on older computers, is called 51/4-inch; it comes in square jacket that’s exactly 5% inches on each side. An even older size, 8-inch, is used just on ancient computers that are no longer built.
Those 3 sizes have nicknames: An 8-inch floppy disk is called a large floppy.
A5'%-inch floppy disk is called a minifloppy. A3'4-inch floppy disk is called a microfloppy.
Here’s their history:
8-inch floppies were invented in the early 1970's by IBM.
51/-inch floppies were invented in the late 1970's by Shugart Associates, which later became part of Xerox.
3¥/2-inch floppies were invented in the 1980's by Sony. They’ve become
the most popular size because they’re the smallest (small enough to fit in your shirt’s pocket) and sturdiest (sturdy enough to survive when you fall on your face). They’re easy to mail, since they’re small enough to fit in a standard white business envelope and sturdy enough to survive the U.S. Postal System.
Jacket colors
The jacket of a 54-inch or 8-inch floppy disk is usually black. The jacket of a 34-inch floppy disk is usually black, blue, white, or beige (very light grayish brown). If you pay a surcharge, you can get jackets that have wilder colors.
Magnetized iron
The round disk (which hides inside the square jacket) is coated with rust, so it looks brown. Since the rust is made of iron, which can be magnetized, the disk stores magnetic signals. The pattern of magnetic signals is a code representing your data.
Drives
To use a floppy disk, you must buy a floppy-disk drive, which is a computerized record player.
If the drive is external, it’s a box sitting near the system unit. If the drive is internal, it’s built into the system unit.
The drive has a slit in its front side. To use the drive, push the disk (including its jacket) into the slit.
When you push your disk into the slit, don’t push the disk in backwards or upside-down! Here’s how to push the disk in correctly:
The disk’s jacket has a label on it and a big oval cutout. (If the disk is 3’- inch, the cutout is covered by a metal slider.)
Insert the disk so the oval cutout goes into the drive before the label does. If the drive’s slit is horizontal, make sure the label’s on the jacket’s top
side; if the drive is vertical, make sure the label’s on the jacket’s /eft side.
If the disk is 52-inch or 8-inch, close the drive’s latch, to cover the slit and hold the disk in place. (If the disk is 3’4-inch, there’s no latch.) Since the slit and latch act as a door, closing the latch is called closing the door.
Then the disk drive automatically positions the disk onto the turntable that’s hidden inside the drive. The turntable’s called the spindle. It can spin the disk fast.
Like a record player, the disk drive contains an arm with a “needle” on it. The needle’s called the read-write head, because it can read what’s on the disk and also write new info onto the disk.
To transfer info to the disk, the computer lowers the read-write head onto the disk. An electrical charge passes through the head. The charge creates an electromagnetic field, which magnetizes the iron on the disk’s surface. Each iron particle has its own north pole & south pole; the patterns formed by the north & south poles are a code that stands for the info you’re storing.
Tracks As the disk spins, the head remains stationary, so that the head draws a circle on the spinning disk’s surface. The circle’s called a track.
To draw the circle, the head doesn’t use ink; instead, it uses a pattern of magnetic pulses. Since your eye can’t see magnetism, your eye can’t see the circle; but it’s there!
When you start using a blank disk, the arm puts the head near the disk’s outer rim, so that the head’s track (circle) is almost as wide as the disk. That track’s called track 0.
Then the arm lifts the head, moves the head slightly closer to the virgin disk’s center, and puts the head back down onto the disk again. The head draws another circular track on the disk, but this new circular track is slightly smaller than the previous one. It’s called track 1.
Then the head draws track 2, then track 3, then track 4, and so on, until the head gets near the center of the disk, and draws the last circular track (which
Buying: disks 25
is smaller than the other tracks).
To organize the info on a track, the computer divides the track into sectors. Each “sector” is an arc of the circle.
Single-sided versus double-sided drives A
modern disk drive has 2 read-write heads. One head uses the disk’s top surface, while the other head uses the disk’s bottom, so that the drive can use both sides of the disk simultaneously. That’s called a double-sided disk drive. (Double-sided is also called DS and 2-sided and 2S.) The drive puts info onto the disk by first using track 0 of the main side, then track 0 of the flip side, then track 1 of the main side, then track 1 of the flip side, etc.
If a drive’s so old and primitive that it has just one read-write head, it uses just one side of the disk and is called a single-sided disk drive. (Single-sided is also called SS and 1-sided and 1S.)
Capacity How many kilobytes can you fit on a floppy disk? The answer depends on which kind of drive you have.
The most popular kind of floppy-disk drive is called a 3'/2-inch high-density floppy drive. Here’s how it works:
It holds a 3'4-inch floppy disk. It writes on both sides of the disk simultaneously, since it’s a double-sided disk drive. It writes 80 tracks on each side. It divides each track into 18 sectors. Each sector holds “512 bytes”, which is half a kilobyte, 2K.
Since the disk has 4K per sector, 18 sectors per track, 80 tracks per side, and 2 sides, the disk’s total capacity is “’2K times 18 times 80 times 2”, which is 1440K. So altogether, the disk holds 1440K. That’s called 1.44M (where an M is defined as being 1000K), so a 34-inch high-density floppy drive is also called a 1.44M drive, and the disk you put in it is called a 1.44M floppy disk. Since the disk holds 1.44M (which is 1440K), and since a K is 1024 bytes, the disk holds “1440 times 1024” bytes, which is 1,474,560 bytes.
Although the disk holds 1440K, some of those K are used for “bureaucratic overhead” (such as holding a directory that reminds the computer which data is where on your disk). A Mac uses just 1 sector (2K) for bureaucratic overhead. An IBM-compatible computer uses 33 sectors (16’2K) for bureaucratic overhead, leaving just 1423’4K for your data.
When you buy a blank disk to put in a 1.44M drive, make sure the disk is 3'4-inch; and to get full use of what the drive can accomplish, make sure the disk is high-density (HD). An HD 3%-inch disk has the letters HD stamped in white on its jacket (but with the D nudged against the H) and has an extra square hole cut through its jacket.
Old computers use inferior floppy drives, whose capacities are below 1.44M. A capacity below 150K is called single-density (SD). A capacity above 150M but below 1M is called double-density (DD). A capacity above 1M is called high-density (HD). Anything below high-density is called low-density.
Although the jacket of a high-density 34-inch disk has “HD” stamped on it and an extra hole punched through it, the jackets of other kinds of disks can lack any distinguishing marks. Too bad!
Popular (BM -compatible drives For IBM-compatible
computers, four kinds of floppy drives have been popular:
IBM drive's name Capacity Details 5'%-inch double-density 360K 40 tracks per side, 9 sectors per track 54-inch high-density 1200K(=1.2M) 80 tracks per side, 15 sectors per track
3'4-inch double-density 720K 80 tracks per side, 9 sectors per track 3%-inch high-density 1440K(=1.44M) 80 tracks per side, 18 sectors per track
Each of those IBM-compatible drives is double-sided and has ‘AK per sector. They’re manufactured by companies such as NEC, Teac, Chinon, Epson, and Alps. The fanciest drives (34-inch high-density) used to be expensive, but now you can buy them for just $29 from mail-order discount dealers.
Mac drives For Mac computers, three kinds of floppy drives have been popular:
Mac drive’s name Capacity 1-sided double-density 400K
Details
1 side, 8-12 sectors per track 2 sides, 8-12 sectors per track 1440K(=1.44M) 2 sides, 18 sectors per track
2-sided double-density 800K
high-density
26 Buying: disks
Each Mac drive is 34-inch and has 80 tracks per side, '2K per sector.
On a disk, the inner tracks have smaller diameters than the outer tracks. Mac double-density drives puts fewer sectors onto the inner tracks and put extra sectors onto the outer tracks, as follows: the outer 16 tracks are divided into 12 sectors, the next 16 tracks into 11 sectors, the next 16 into 10, the next 16 into 9, and the inner 16 into 8.
Speed In the disk drive, the disk spins quickly.
Low-density 5’/-inch disks revolve 5 times per second. 8-inch disks and high-density 5'/-inch disks revolve faster: 6 times per second.
3%-inch disks revolve even faster: between 6% and 10 times per second.
Buying disks
When you buy a floppy disk, make sure its size matches the size of the drive: a 34-inch disk will not work in a 54-inch drive. If your drive is single-density or double-density, it can’t handle high-density disks.
Formatting the disk Before you can use a blank floppy disk, its surface must be formatted (divided into tracks and sectors). Buy a disk that’s been formatted already, or buy an unformatted disk and make your computer format it (by giving a formatting command).
After the disk’s been formatted, put whatever info you wish onto the disk. (Warning: if you accidentally tell the drive to format that disk again, the drive will erase all your old data!) Remember:
If a disk is blank, make sure it
What's a disk worth?Though you can buy a blank floppy disk for under 50¢, a disk containing info costs much more. The price depends on how valuable the info is.
Protect your disks Unfortunately, magnetic signals on a disk are easy to destroy, so keep your disk at least 6 inches away from magnets, such as:
paper clips that have been in a magnetized paper-clip holder
speakers in your stereo, TV, and phone (because speakers contain magnets) electric motors (because motors generate an electromagnetic field)
Keep your disk away from heat, because heat destroys the disk’s magnetism and “melts” your data:
Don’t leave your disk in the hot sun, or on a sunny windowsill, or in the back of your car on a hot day. If your disk drive or computer feels hot, quickly lower its temperature, by getting an air conditioner or a fan.
A 3'%-inch floppy disk comes in a strong jacket.
If you’re using a 5’/4-inch or 8-inch floppy disk instead, beware! Its jacket is too weak to protect it from pressure. Don’t squeeze it. Don’t put it under a
heavy object (such as a paperweight or book). To write a note on the disk’s jacket, don’t use a ballpoint pen (which crushes the disk); use a soft felt-tip pen instead.
Keep the disk away from dust. For example, don’t smoke cigarettes near the disk, because the smoke becomes dust that lands on the disk.
Keep the disk dry. If you must transport a disk during a rainstorm, put the disk in a plastic bag. Don’t drink coffee or soda near the disk: your drink might spill.
To handle the disk, touch just the disk’s jacket, not the brown disk itself. Holes in the jacket let you see the brown disk inside; don’t put your fingers in the holes.
Write - protect notch When you buy a blank 5%-inch or 8-inch floppy disk, the disk comes in a square black jacket. One of the square’s 4 sides has a notch cut into it.
You can cover the notch, by sticking a plastic tab over it. The tab has a
gummed back, so you can stick it on the disk easily and cover the notch. You get the tab free when you buy the disk.
For a 3¥2-inch disk, the notch is different:
It’s a square hole near the jacket’s corner but not on the jacket’s edge. To
cover it, you use a black slider instead of a tab. On old Apple Mac disks, the slider was red instead of black.
Whenever you ask the computer to change the info on the disk, the drive checks whether you’ve covered the notch.
For a 514-inch disk, the normal situation is for the notch to be uncovered. For a 31/2-inch or 8-inch disk, the normal situation is for the notch to be covered.
If the situation’s normal, the computer will obey your command: it will change the info on the disk as you wish. But if the situation’s abnormal (because the notch is covered when it should be uncovered, or is uncovered when it should be covered), the computer will refuse to change the disk’s info.
If your disk contains valuable info and you’re afraid some idiot will accidentally erase or alter that info, make the situation abnormal (by changing whether the notch is covered), so the computer will refuse to change the disk’s info. It will refuse to erase the disk, refuse to add new info to the disk, and refuse to edit what’s on the disk. The disk is protected from being changed, protected from being written on; the disk is write-protected (locked). Since the tab affects whether the disk is write- protected, the tab is called a write-protect tab, and the notch is called a write-protect notch.
When you buy a disk that already contains info, the disk usually comes write-protected, to protect you from accidentally erasing the info.
If you buy a 54-inch floppy disk that already contains info, it might come with a write-protect tab already covering the notch, to write-protect the disk.
But instead of creating a notch then covering it with a tab, some manufacturers save money by getting special disks that have no notch. The computer treats a notchless disk the same way as a disk whose notch is covered.
Backup Even if you handle your disk carefully, eventually something will go wrong, and some info on your disk will get wrecked accidentally. To prepare for that inevitable calamity, tell the computer to copy all info from the disk onto a blank disk, so the blank disk becomes an exact copy of the original. Store the copy far away, in a different room, or — better yet — a different building. The copy is called a backup. Use the backup disk when the original disk gets wrecked. Making a backup disk is like buying an insurance policy: it protects you against disasters.
When you buy a floppy that already contains software, try copying the floppy before you begin using it.
If you’re lucky, the computer will make the backup copy without any hassles. If you’re unlucky, the software company put instructions on the floppy that make the computer refuse to copy the disk, because the company fears you’ ll
illegally make copies to your friends. A floppy the computer refuses to copy (and so is protected against illegal copying) is called copy-protected. A floppy you can copy is called copyable (or unprotected).
Super -capacity floppies
Though a standard floppy disk holds up to 1.44M, super-capacity floppy disks hold more and come in three styles: Type Size Capacity Price Zip disk 4" 100M $89 drive by Iomega, $11 disk $187 drive by Iomega, $17 disk LS-120 disk 34%," 120M $100 drive by Imation, $10 disk
Super-capacity floppy disks used to be popular, but newer computers use CD or DVD disks instead, which cost less and hold more.
Zip 250 disk 4" 250M
Hard disks
Hard disks are better than floppy disks in 3 ways:
Hard disks are sturdier than floppies. Hard disks are hard and firm; they don’t flop or jiggle. They’re more reliable than floppies.
Hard drives hold more info than floppy drives. The typical floppy drive holds 1.44 megabytes. The typical hard drive holds 1 terabyte (which is 1,000,000 megabytes).
Hard drives work faster than floppies. The typical floppy disk rotates between 5 and 10 times per second. The typical hard disk rotates between 90 and 167 times per second.
Unfortunately, the typical hard disk can’t be removed from its drive: the hard disk is non-removable, stuck inside its drive permanently. (Hard disks that are removable are rare.)
Since the typical hard disk is stuck forever inside its drive, in one fixed place, it’s called a fixed disk.
Though the typical floppy-disk drive holds just one disk at a time, the typical hard-disk drive holds a whole stack of disks and handles all the stack’s disks simultaneously, by using many arms and read-write heads.
If your hard drive is the rare kind that holds a removable ae of disks, the stack comes in a cartridge or pack that you can remove from the hard drive.
Back in 1977, the typical hard disk had a 14-inch diameter and was removable. The hard-disk drive was a big cabinet (the size of a top-loading washing machine), cost about $30,000, held 0.1 gigabytes, and required a minicomputer or mainframe.
Life’s gotten smaller!
Now the typical desktop computer’s hard disk has a diameter of just 3’4 inches, a height of just 1 inch, costs $46, holds 1000 gigabytes (which is a
terabyte), and fits in a desktop computer. Notebook computers use hard disks whose diameter is just 2’ inches.
(BM drive letters
A traditional IBM-compatible computer has both a floppy drive and a hard drive. The floppy drive is called drive A; the hard drive is called drive C.
If the computer has two floppy drives, the main floppy drive is called drive A; the other floppy drive is called drive B.
If the computer has two hard drives, the main hard drive is called drive C; the other hard drive is called drive D.
Copy between disks
When you buy a program, it might come on a floppy disk (or CD or DVD). Put that disk into its drive then copy the program from that disk to the hard disk. (To find out how to copy, follow the program’s instructions.) Then use just the copy on the hard disk (which holds more info and works faster than a floppy disk or CD or DVD).
Like floppy disks, hard disks are coated with magnetized iron. Floppy disks & hard disks are both called magnetic disks. Like floppy disks, hard disks are in constant danger of losing their magnetic signals — and your data!
Protect yourself! Every week, take any new info that’s on your hard disk and copy it onto a pile of floppy disks (or CDs or DVDs or a USB flash drive), so you’ve created a backup copy of what was new on your hard disk.
To avoid giant disasters, avoid creating giant files. If you’re writing a book and want to store it on your hard disk, split the
Buying: disks 27
book into chapters, and make each chapter a separate file, so if you accidentally say “delete” you’ll lose just one chapter instead of your entire masterpiece.
How the head works
In a floppy drive, the read-write head (the “needle”) touches the spinning floppy disk. But in a hard drive, the read-write head does not touch the spinning hard disk; instead, it hovers over the disk, very close to the disk (just a tiny fraction of an inch above the disk), so close that the read-write head can detect the disk’s magnetism and alter it.
Since the head doesn’t actually touch the disk, there isn’t any friction, so the head and the disk don’t suffer from any wear-and- tear. That’s why a hard-disk system lasts longer than a floppy- disk system and is more reliable.
Winchester drives In all modern hard drives, the head acts as a miniature airplane: it flies above the disk.
It flies at a very low altitude: a tiny fraction of an inch. The only thing keeping the head off the rotating disk is a tiny cushion of air — a breeze caused by the disk’s motion.
When you unplug the drive, the disk stops rotating, so the breeze stops, and the head comes to rest on a landing strip, which is like a miniature airport.
Such a drive is called a flying-head drive. It’s also called a Winchester drive, because “Winchester” was IBM’s secret code-name for that technology when IBM was inventing it.
The head flies at an altitude that’s extremely low — about a ten-thousandth of an inch! That’s even smaller than the width ofa particle of dust or cigarette smoke! So if any dust or smoke lands onto the disk, the head will smash against it, and you’ll have a major disaster.
To prevent such a disaster, the entire Winchester drive is sealed airtight, to prevent any dust or smoke from entering the drive and getting onto the disk. Since the drive is sealed, you can’t remove the disks (unless you buy an extremely expensive Winchester drive that has a flexible seal).
Speed
Here’s how the computer retrieves data from the drive. First, the drive’s head moves to the correct track.
The time that the head spends moving is called the seek time. Since that time depends on how far the head is from the correct track, it depends on where the correct track is and where the head is moving from.
According to calculus, on the average the head must move across a third of the tracks to reach the correct track. That’s why the time to traverse a third of the tracks is called the average seek time.
A millisecond (ms) is a thousandth of a second. In a typical hard drive, the average seek time is about 9 milliseconds. (In older hard drives that are no longer made, the average seek time was 28 milliseconds.)
After the head reaches the correct track, it must wait for the disk to rotate, until the correct sector reaches the head.
That rotation time is called the latency. On the average, the head must wait for half a revolution; so the average latency time is a half-revolution. The typical cheap hard drive rotates 5400 times per minute, which is 90 times per second, so a half-revolution takes half of a 90" of a second, so it’s a 180" of a second, so it’s about .006 seconds, which is 6 milliseconds.
If you add the average seek time to the average latency time, you get the total average access time. So for a typical cheap hard drive, the average access time = 9 milliseconds seek + 6 milliseconds latency = 15 milliseconds.
For a higher quality hard drive, the rotation speed is 7200 rpm (instead of 5400), giving 120 rotations per second (instead of 90), an average latency of 4 milliseconds (instead of 6), and an average access time of 13 milliseconds (instead of 15).
During the last few years, hard drive manufacturers have become dishonest: they say the “average access time” is 9 milliseconds, when they should actually say the “average seek time” is 9 milliseconds.
After the head finally reaches the correct sector, you must wait for the head to read the data. If the data consumes several sectors, you must wait for the head to read all those sectors.
28 Buying: disks
Manufacturers For many years, most hard drives for microcomputers were built by 4 American companies: Seagate Technology (ST), Quantum, Western Digital, and Conner:
Seagate was the first of those companies to make hard drives for microcomputers. It set the standard that the other companies had to follow. New Seagate drives work fine, though Seagate’s old models were noisy & unreliable.
Quantum became famous by building the hard drives used in Apple’s Mac computers. Quantum also built drives for IBM PC clones. Quantum drives are excellent.
Western Digital invented hard drives that cost less. They’re popular in cheap clones and discount computer stores.
Conner was the first company to invent hard drives tiny enough to fit in a laptop computer. Seagate had ignored the laptop market too long, and Conner’s popularity zoomed up fast. Conner became the fastest-growing company in the history of American industry!
Other manufacturers of hard drives were America’s Maxtor & Micropolis, Japan’s Toshiba & Fujitsu & Hitachi & NEC, and Korea’s Samsung.
Companies merged:
Toshiba bought Fujitsu’s hard-drive business. Western Digital bought Hitachi’s hard-drive business. Maxtor bought Quantum’s hard-drive business; then Seagate bought the hard-drive businesses of Maxtor, Conner, and Samsung. Micropolis & NEC gave up and left the hard-drive business.
Now just 3 hard-drive manufacturers remain:
Western Digital (44% of all hard drives) Seagate (40%) Toshiba (16%)
To use a hard drive, you need a hard-drive controller, which was a card you had to buy separately but nowadays is included on the hard drive’s card and in the hard drive’s price.
How many sectors?
How many sectors do you get on a track?
Early schemes Back in the 1980’s, the typical hard-drive controller for IBM-compatible computers put 17 sectors on each track.
That scheme was the Seagate Technology 506 with Modified Frequency Modulation (ST506 MFM).
An improved scheme squeezed 26 sectors onto each track and was the ST506 with Run Length Limited (ST506 RLL). A further improvement squeezed 34 sectors onto each track and was the Enhanced Small Device Interface (ESDI).
Squeezing extra sectors onto each track increases the drive’s capacity (total number of megabytes) and the transfer rate (the number of sectors that the head reads per rotation or per second).
All those schemes — MFM, RLL, and ESDI — have become obsolete.
[DE Now the most popular scheme is called Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE). Like ESDI, it squeezes 34 sectors onto each track; but it uses special tricks to transfer data faster.
The original version of IDE was limited to small drives: up to 528M.
Western Digital invented an improved version, Enhanced IDE (EIDE), which could handle bigger drives and went faster: it transferred 16.6 megabytes per second (MB/s). Seagate invented competing methods (Fast ATA-2 and Fast ATA-3), which also transfer 16.6 MB/s.
All those technologies got replaced by Ultra, which transfers twice as fast: 33.3 MB/s. The Ultra version of EIDE is Ultra IDE; the Ultra version of Fast ATA is Ultra ATA. Then came an even faster Ultra ATA, called
Ultra ATA-100 (100 MB/s). Maxtor invented an even faster Ultra ATA, Ultra ATA-133 (133 MB/s).
All those ATA technologies are called Parallel ATA (PATA). They’ve been replaced by an even faster type, Serial ATA (SATA). The first SATA controller (SATA/150) transferred 150 MB/s. Newer SATA controllers (called SATA 2 or SATA/300) transfer 300 MB/s. The newest SATA controllers (called SATA 3 or SATA/600) transfer 600 MB/s (6 gigabits per second).
S25! A totally different fast scheme is the Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, which is pronounced “scuzzy”).
A fast version of SCSI, Ultra 160 SCSI, transfers 160 MB/s. During the 1980’s and early 1990’s, SCSI was used on most Mac hard
drives and the biggest IBM-compatible hard drives, because IDE drives were too slow and held just a few megabytes. But during the late 1990’s, IDE drives became faster, bigger, and cheaper, so SCSI drives became unpopular.
[BM -compatible drives Modern, popular IBM- compatible hard drives cost about $30 per terabyte. When discussing hard drives, a gigabyte (gig or G) is defined to mean “1000 megabytes”; a terabyte (T) means “1000 gigabytes”.
Here are the prices charged by Best Buy for desktop-computer SATA/600 drives when this book went to press in June 2020: Capacity Speed Cache Manufacturer Price
1T 7200 rpm 64M _ Seagate $46 7200 rpm 256M _ Seagate $56
5400 rpm 64M Western Digital $70
Toshiba $105 Western Digital $200 Western Digital $250 Western Digital $320
The drive’s cache (or buffer) is RAM chips holding copies of the sectors you used recently — so if you want to look at those sectors again, you can read from the RAM chips (which are fast) instead of waiting for the disk to spin (which is slow).
7200 rpm 128M 5400 rpm 64M 7200 rpm 256M 7200 rpm 256M
External drives A hard drive’s price depends on whether the drive is internal (fits inside the computer) or external (comes in a separate box that you put next to the computer). Internal drives are faster; but if your computer is small or filled up or can’t be easily opened, you must buy an external drive instead. The typical external drive plugs into a USB port.
When this book went to press in June 2020, here’s what Best Buy charged for external USB drives made by Western Digital:
1T for $45, 2T for $60, 4T for $90, 5T for $105, 12T for $320, 14T for $380
History Hard-drive prices dropped dramatically! Here’s what size hard drive you could get for about $200 each year:
Year _$200 size Year Year _$200 size
1992 50M=.05G 1998 2004 200G
1993. 130M=.13G 1999 2005 300G
1994 340M=.34G 2000 2006 400G
1995 850M=.85G 2001 2007 500G
1996 1G 2002 2008 640G
1997 3%G 2003 2009 1000G=1T 2010 2000G=2T
200 size
Now you can get a 5T drive for $105.
Buy a big drive Buy a drive that holds several terabytes. It will give you more peace of mind than a smaller drive, and it will also act faster.
For example, suppose you want to store a terabyte of info, and you’re debating whether to buy a 1-terabyte drive or a 2-terabyte drive. Suppose each drive is advertised as having a 9-millisecond seek time. The 2-terabyte drive will nevertheless act faster. Here’s why....
Suppose you buy the 2-terabyte drive and use just the first terabyte of it. Since you’re using just the first half of the drive, the head needs to move just half as far as usual; so over the 1-terabyte part you’re using, the effective average seek time is just half as much as usual: it’s 4/4 milliseconds!
RAID
If you need lots of terabytes, attach several hard drives together, and make the drives all act simultaneously. The group of drives is called a drive array and acts as one huge drive. That technique is called RAID (which originally stood for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks but now stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks).
Here are RAID’s most popular versions:
RAID level 0, called data striping, is the fastest. It divides each long file into several stripes. A stripe’s first part is put onto drive 1, second part onto drive 2, third part onto drive 3, etc., simultaneously, so that the stripe spans across all the drives. Each drive therefore has to handle just part of each stripe and just part of each file and finishes faster.
RAID level 1, called data mirroring, is the safest. It uses just 2 drives. It puts each file onto drive 1 and simultaneously puts a backup copy of the file onto drive 2, so drive 2 always contains an exact copy of what’s on drive 1. That way, if drive 1 ever fails, the computer can get the info from drive 2.
RAID level 3, called shared data parity, is more sophisticated: it’s a clever compromise between RAID level 0 and RAID level 1. Like RAID level 0, it divides each long file into stripes, puts a stripe’s first part onto drive 1, second part onto drive 2, third part onto drive 3, etc.; but onto the final drive it puts parity info instead, which is info that the computer uses to double-check the accuracy of the other drives.
RAID level 5, called distributed data parity, is the most sophisticated. It resembles RAID level 3; but instead of putting all the parity info onto the ast disk, it puts the first stripe’s parity info onto the first disk, the second stripe’s parity info onto the second disk, etc., so that the parity info is distributed among ail the disks, to prevent the last disk from getting overworked and bogging down the whole system.
Instead of buying a program on a floppy disk, you can buy a program on the same kind of compact disk (CD) that holds music.
ACD that holds music is called a music CD (or audio CD).
ACD that holds computer data instead is called a computer CD (or data
CD). Since the computer data on it cannot be erased, a computer-data CD is also called a CD read-only memory (CD-ROM).
To make your computer read the CD-ROM disk, put the disk into a CD-ROM drive, which is a souped-up version of the kind of CD player that plays music.
Like an ordinary CD player, a CD-ROM drive uses just optics. No magnetism is involved. The drive just shines a laser beam at the shiny disk and notices, from the reflection, which indentations (pits) are on the disk. The pattern of pits is a code that represents the data. Soa CD-ROM drive’s an example of an optical disk drive.
To put the disk into the drive, press a button on the drive. That makes the drive stick its tongue out at you! The tongue is called a tray. Put the disk onto the tray, so that the disk’s label is face-up. (If the drive is old-fashioned, you must put the disk into a caddy first; but the most modern drives are caddyless.) Then push the tray back into the drive. Finally, use the keyboard or mouse to give a command that makes the computer taste what you’ve put on its tongue.
Drive letters
Here’s how a traditional computer assigns the drives:
Drive A is a 34-inch floppy drive (1.44M). Drive B is a 54-inch floppy drive (1.2M).
Drive C is a hard drive (about 1T) or a solid-state drive. Drive D is a CD-ROM drive (or a DVD drive).
If your computer has two hard drives, the first hard drive is C, the second is D, and the CD-ROM drive is the next letter (E).
Buying: disks 29
Size
The standard CD-ROM disk has a diameter of 12 centimeters (which is about 5 inches) and holds 650 megabytes.
The CD-ROM disk is single-sided: all the data is on the disk’s bottom side — the side that doesn’t have a label.
The disk contains 2 billion pits, all arranged into a single spiral (like the groove on a phonograph record). If you were to unravel the spiral, to make it a straight line, it would be 3 miles long!
On a CD, each “song” is called a track; it can hold music or computer data. Each “song” (track) can be as long or as short as you wish. The CD can hold 99 tracks, totaling an hour of music (for an audio CD) or 650 megabytes (for a CD-ROM disk). 650 megabytes is about 450 times as much as a high-density 1.44M floppy, so a single CD-ROM disk can hold as much info as a stack of 450 high-density 1.44M floppies!
Since a CD-ROM disk holds so much, a single CD-ROM can hold a whole library (including encyclopedias, dictionaries, other reference materials, famous novels, programs, artwork, music, and videos). It’s a great way to distribute massive quantities of info! Moreover, a CD-ROM disk costs less than 15¢ to manufacture (once you’ve bought the appropriate CD-ROM- making equipment, which costs several hundred dollars).
CD-ROM disks store info differently than floppy & hard disks:
Ona CD, each track is part of a spiral. On a floppy or hard disk, each track is a circle. On a CD, different tracks have different lengths and hold a different
number of bytes. On a typical floppy or hard disk, all tracks have the same number of bytes as each other.
Speed
When buying a CD-ROM drive, the most important factor to consider is the drive’s speed.
Transfer rate The speed at which the drive spins is called the transfer rate. The higher, the better!
On the first CD-ROM drives that were invented, the transfer rate
was the same speed as a music CD’s: 150 kilobytes per second. That speed is called 1X. Then came drives that could spin twice as fast (300 kilobytes per second). That’s called double speed or 2X. Then came 3X drives, then 4X, then 4/2X, then 6X, then 8X, then 10X, then 12X. Then came even faster drives, called 24X/12X (or 24X maximum or 24X max), that read outer tracks at a maximum speed of 24X, though the inner tracks are read at just 12X. Now you can buy drives that go much faster: 56X max!
Seek time The average time it takes for the head to move to the correct track is called the average seek time.
The lower the average seek time, the better! In modern CD- ROM drives, the average seek time is 100 milliseconds or less.
Caring for your CD-ROM disks A CD-ROM disk’s main enemy is dirt.
Like a music CD, a CD-ROM disk comes in a clear square box, called the jewel box. To use the disk, remove it from the jewel box and put it in the drive. When you finish using it, put it back into the jewel box, which keeps the dust off it.
When putting the disk into or out of a drive, don’t put your fingers on the
disk’s surface: instead, hold the disk by its edge, so your greasy fingerprints don’t get on the disk’s surface.
Once a month, gently wipe dust off the disk’s bottom surface (where the data is). While wiping, be gentle and don’t get your greasy fingerprints on the disk. Start in the middle and wipe toward the outer edge.
If you want to write on the disk, use a felt-tipped pen (not a ballpoint or pencil). Don’t stick any labels on the disk.
The typical CD-ROM disk will last about 12 years. Then the aluminum on its surface will start to oxidize (corrode), and the CD will become unreadable.
30 Buying: disks
CD-FK
You can create your own CD’s, in the privacy of your home, if you buy a CD-Recordable drive (CD-R drive). It can write onto blank CD-R disks, which used to be expensive but now are cheap.
You can buy 100 blank CD-R disks for $15 at Walmart, so the disks cost you just 15¢ each.
Although a CD-R drive can write onto a disk, it cannot erase or edit what you wrote.
CD-RW
For more flexibility, you can buy a CD-ReWritable drive (CD-RW drive), which can write onto a blank CD-RW disk and then edit what you wrote. CD-RW drives used to be expensive, but now they’ve become nearly as cheap as CD-R drives, so nobody bothers selling CD-R drives anymore.
You can buy 100 blank CD-RW disks for $50 at Walmart.com, so the disks cost you 50¢ each.
Creating your own CD (by using a CD-R or CD-RW drive) is called CD burning (because the data is burned into the CD), so CD-R and CD-RW drives are called CD burners.
In 1997, the electronics industry began selling an improved kind of CD, called a Digital Versatile Disk (DVD). It looks like a standard-size CD but holds more info.
Unlike a standard CD, which holds just an hour of music or 650M of data, a standard DVD can hold a 2-hour movie (including the video and sound) or 4.7G of data. Since it can hold a movie, some movie lovers call it a “Digital Video Disk”, but it’s more versatile than just that!
Improved DVD
A DVD can be recorded on just the bottom side (like a CD) or on both sides. (To use the second side, you must remove the disk from the drive and flip the disk upside down, like you’d flip a phonograph record.) A dual-sided DVD can hold 9.4G of data.
An improved technology, called dual-layer DVD, puts nearly two layers of data on each side, so you get 8.5G per side, 17G total.
A DVD that contains computer data (instead of a movie or music) is called a DVD-ROM disk. To use it, put it in a DVD-ROM drive, which costs just slightly more than a CD-ROM drive. Every DVD-ROM drive can read DVD-ROM disks and standard CD-ROM disks; just modern DVD-ROM drives can also read CD-R and CD-RW disks.
Create your own DVD
To create and edit your own DVDs in your own home, buy a DVD+RW drive. It can read & write DVD+RW disks, DVD+R disks, CD-RW disks, and CD-R disks.
Get a DVD+RW drive, not a DVD-RW drive (which uses different disks, called DVD-RW disks), or get a DVD+RW drive (which can handle both DVD+RW and DVD-RW disks).
Here’s what stores charged in June 2020:
an internal DVD+RW drive $25 at Best Buy an external DVD+RW drive (using USB) $30 at Best Buy 100 blank DVD+R disks $20 at Sam’s Club (so 20¢ each)
Buying: disks 31
WO devices
To get info into and out of the computer, you need input/output devices (I/O devices). Here they are....
The computer’s screen is also called the display. It resembles a TV screen but lacks an antenna and a dial to change channels. It gives you just one channel: computer!
Kinds of screens You have many choices. Built in?\s the screen attached?
If the screen is permanently attached to the front of the computer’s main part, the screen is called built-in. The screen is built-in if you have a smartphone or tablet computer or laptop or all-in-one.
In a tower computer or traditional desktop computer, the screen is stand-alone (a separate box, with a cable running from it to the computer’s main part, which is the system unit) and is called a computer monitor. The advertised price of such a computer system usually does not include the computer monitor, which costs extra, though sometimes you’ll see a bundle price that includes both the system unit and the computer monitor in the bundle. The computer monitor’s price includes the cable that goes to the system unit.
Touch - sensitive? If the screen can sense where you touched the screen, it’s called a touch-sensitive screen (touchscreen).
Every smartphone has a touchscreen.
The typical tablet computer has a touchscreen (though old Kindle and Nook e-readers do not).
If a laptop computer or all-in-one computer uses a new operating system (such as Windows 8 or 8.1 or 10 or 11), it expects you to have a touchscreen; it’s awkward to use without a touchscreen; using it without a touchscreen feels like torture. If you tell HP to custom-build a laptop for you with a 15.6" screen, HP charges $50 extra to make the screen be touch-sensitive. Older operating systems (such as Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Mac OS X) don’t know how to handle touchscreens (unless you add extra software). For example, Apple’s laptop computers and all-in-one computers do not use touchscreens.
The typical tower computer does not have a touchscreen (because touchscreen monitors are pricey and hard to connect).
CRT or LED? Technology has improved.
If the computer’s screen is old-fashioned, it resembles an old TV: it’s bulky (many inches thick), heavy, and consumes lots of electricity, because it contains a picture tube. The technical name for “picture tube” is cathode-ray tube (CRT).
If the computer’s screen is modern, it resembles a modern TV: it’s thin (less than an inch thick), lightweight, and consumes just a modest amount of electricity, because it contains a liquid-crystal display (LCD). The cost of manufacturing an LCD has dropped, so now an LCD costs much less than a CRT; hardly anybody buys a CRT anymore. They typical LCD screen is supplemented by light-emitting diodes (LED) and called an LED screen.
Flat? Is the screen flat? An LCD screen is typically flat (not bent or curved).
ACRT screen is based on a picture tube whose screen is typically curved, but if you pay extra you can get a CRT whose screen is flat. The flat screen has
2 advantages: It displays horizontal and vertical lines more accurately (without curving). It reflects light from fewer angles (so you see fewer annoying reflections).
32 Buying: I/O devices
Color? The typical screen is color (which means it can show all the colors of the rainbow). Cheaper screens are monochrome (which meant they’re limited to just black-and-light). Monochrome LCD screens are used in cheap gadgets that don’t require color and must run on minimal electricity. For example, monochrome LCD screens
are used in digital wristwatches and solar pocket calculators. They display black and white.
Monochrome screens were also used long ago, in the cheapest CRT monitors.
4 types of CRT monochrome monitors were common:
A paper-white monitor displayed black and white.
An amber monitor displayed black and yellow.
A green-screen monitor displayed black and light green. A gray-scale monitor — displayed many shades of gray.
How colors are produced
On the screen, the picture shown is made of thousands of tiny dots. Each tiny dot is called a picture’s element (pixel or pel).
In a color screen, each pixel’s color is made by aiming 3 colored lights (red, green, and blue) all at the same pixel.
Ifjust the red _ light shines at the pixel, the pixel looks red. If just the green light shines at the pixel, the pixel looks green. Ifjust the blue light shines at the pixel, the pixel looks blue.
If all 3 lights shine at the pixel, the pixel looks very bright: white! If all the lights are turned off, the pixel looks black.
To make the pixel look cyan (greenish blue), just the green & blue lights shine. To make the pixel look magenta (purplish red), just the red & blue lights shine. To make the pixel look yellow, just the red and green lights shine (which produce a color that’s brighter and lighter than red or green alone).
That’s how to produce 8 colors: red, green, blue, white, black, cyan, magenta, and yellow.
Although a primitive screen produces just those 8 colors, a modern screen can produce extra colors by varying the light’s intensity. For example, instead of the red light being either “on” or “off”, it can be “completely on”, “partly on” (so it looks dim), or “off”.
Here are the names for the different levels of color monitors:
A primitive RGB monitor produces just 8 colors. Its cable to the computer includes a red-light wire, a green-light wire, and a blue-light wire. Each wire’s current has 2 choices (on or off), so the total number of color choices is “2 times 2 times 2”, which is 8.
A Color Graphics Adapter monitor (CGA monitor) can produce 16 colors. Its cable to the computer includes a red-light wire, a green-light wire, a blue-light wire, and an intensity wire. Each wire’s current has 2 choices (on or off), so the total number of choices is “2 times 2 times 2 times 2”, which is 16.
An Enhanced Graphics Adapter monitor (EGA monitor) can produce 64 colors. Its cable to the computer includes 2 red-light wires (generating a total of 4 levels of red-light intensity), 2 green-light wires, and 2 blue-light wires, so the total number of choices is “4 times 4 times 4”, which is 64.
A Video Graphics Array monitor (VGA monitor) can produce over 16 million colors. Its cable to the computer includes 1 red-light wire, 1 green-light wire, and 1 blue-light wire, and each wire can handle 256 levels of intensity, so the total number of choices is “256 times 256 times 256”, which is 16,777,216.
A High-Definition Multimedia Interface monitor (HDMI monitor) uses a cable containing more wires, to produce even higher quality. HDMI was invented in 2002. The first HDMI was called HDMI 1; afterwards came improvements, called HDMI 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, and 2. For example, the current version, HDMI 2, can also handle sounds (like a TV) and many pixels on the screen (“4096x2160 pixels”, totaling 8,847,360 pixels), and each pixel can show “2*8 colors”, totaling 281,474,976,710,656 colors.
The standard is now HDMI (any version from 1 through 2). Primitive RGB, CGA, and EGA monitors are obsolete and no longer built. VGA is still available but obsolescent.
Here’s how a cable connects a monitor to the system unit:
The typical HDMI cable contains 19 wires. Some of them transmit codes about colors and sounds; the others help administer the signals.
For a VGA monitor, the cable to the system unit includes 1 red-light wire, 1 green-light wire, 1 blue-light wire, and several other wires to help administer the signals. Altogether, the VGA cable contains 15 wires.
CGA and EGA cables each contain just 9 wires. If you see a monitor whose cable contains just 9 wires, the monitor is either CGA or EGA, so it’s obsolete.
How are the 3 lights (red, green, and blue) produced?
In an LCD screen, a backlight (at the screen’s back wall) constantly shines at you through 3 colored filters (a red filter, a green filter, and a blue filter).
In a CRT screen (which is a picture tube), a gun shoots electrons at colored phosphors, to wake them up and make them glow temporarily. The gun shoots at the first pixel (which is at the screen’s top-left corner), then the second pixel (which is to the right of the first pixel), etc., until the entire first row’s been shot; then the gun shoots lower rows. Before the phosphors fade much, the gun returns to the screen’s first pixel and shoots them all again, to keep them awake (“refresh” them). How long do you have to wait until the gun shoots the first pixel again? That’s called the refresh rate. You want a refresh rate that’s fast: at least 85 times per second (which is called “85 cycles per second”, “85 “Hertz”, “85 Hz”). If the refresh rate is slower, your eye notices the phosphors are flickering, so you get a headache and want to puke. Flicker is noticeable especially if you look at the screen out of the corner of your eye, since your eye’s peripheral vision is most sensitive to flicker. More precisely:
85 hertz is excellent, seems flicker-free.
75 hertz is rather good. It’s acceptable to most folks, annoying to some.
60 hertz is rather bad. It’s annoying to everybody but still usable.
Below 60 hertz is terrible, unusable.
Sizes
Computer screens come in many sizes.
CET monitors The typical CRT monitor produces VGA color and is 17-inch (17"). That means the distance from the picture tube’s top-left corner to the picture tube’s bottom right corner is 17 inches, measured diagonally.
Although the picture tube’s diagonal size is 17-inch, you see just 16 inches, because 1 inch is hidden behind the plastic that makes up the monitor’s case.
Most CRT monitors are made by companies whose US headquarters are in California. Consumers complained to California’s attorney general that such a monitor shouldn’t be called “17-inch”, since just 16 inches are viewable. California now requires all ads for “17-inch” CRT monitors to include a comment, in parentheses, saying that the viewable image size (vis) is just 16 inches, so the ad looks like this:
17" monitor (16" vis)
Instead of buying a 17-inch CRT monitor, you can buy a bigger one (19-inch or 21-inch) or a smaller one (15-inch or 14-inch). In each case, the viewable image size is about an inch less than the size of the tube.
Each position on the screen is a pixel. The pixels are arranged in rows and columns, to form a grid. In a primitive VGA monitor, the screen is wide enough to hold 640 columns of pixels, and the screen is tall enough to hold 480 rows of pixels, so altogether the number of pixels in the grid is “640 times 480”, which is written “640x480”, which is pronounced “640 by 480”. That’s called the screen’s resolution.
If you buy a big VGA or HDMI monitor (such as 21-inch), the screen is big enough to hold Jots of pixels. You can use such a screen in two ways: you can make the screen either show lots of tiny pixels or show a smaller number of fat pixels.
Here’s how many pixels the typical CRT screen can display: If screen is 14" (13" viewable), it handles 640x480 well, 800x600 poorly.
If screen is 15" (14" viewable), it handles 800x600 well, 1024x768 poorly. If screen is 17" (16" viewable), it handles 1024x768 well, 1280x1024 poorly.
If screen is 19" (18" viewable), it handles 1280x1024 well, 1600x1200 poorly. If screen is 21" (20" viewable), it handles 1600x1200 well, 1800x1440 poorly.
Those resolutions have nicknames:
Resolution 640x480 800x600
1024x768
Nickname minimal VGA
Super VGA (SVGA) eXtended GA (XGA) 1280x1024 Super XGA (SXGA) 1600x1200 Ultra XGA (UXGA)
For most of those resolutions, the first number (which represents the screen’s width) is 4/3 as big as the second number (which represents the screen’s height). Such a screen is called a “4:3 screen” and a standard-ratio screen. (An old-fashioned TV also has a 4:3 screen.) Exception: 1280x1024 has a ratio of 5/4 (written “5:4’”) instead of 4:3.
The typical cheap 17" CRT monitor can show 1024x768 resolution well (at 85 hertz) but shows 1280x1024 resolution poorly (at 60 hertz). The ad for such a monitor typically begins by bragging that it can display 1280x1024 but then admits it handles that resolution poorly and should be used at just 1024x768; it says:
1280x1024 @ 60Hz, 1024x768 @ 85Hz
LED _ monitors Best Buy sells LED monitors (which are a type of LCD monitor) in these sizes & resolutions:
Size Resolution Resolution’s name Ratio Brand Price 19.5" 1600x900 HD (high definition) AOC 24" 1920x1080 = full HD Acer 27" 1920x1080 = full HD : Acer 25" 2560x1080 ~~ ultra-wide full HD 3:9 LG 24" 2560x1440 quad HD : BenQ 32" 1920x1080 full HD : LG 29" 2560x1080 — ultra-wide full HD 3:9 LG 28" 3840x2160 4K ultra HD H Dell 32" 2560x1440 quad HD : HP 34" 3440x1440 —_ultra-wide quad HD AOC 32" 3840x2160 4K ultra HD BenQ
Those are the prices when this book went to press in December 2016.
A ratio of 16:9 means the width is 16/9 as big as the height. That’s called “widescreen”.
Alternative nicknames
VGA Plus nice SVGA or Ultra VGA (UVGA)
Aratio of about 21:9 means the with is about 21/9 as big as the height. That’s called “ultra-wide screen”.
Widescreen & ultra-wide screen monitors are good for watching movies but bad for reading text, since text needs more height and less width. Some monitors can pivot 90 degrees, so 16:9 becomes 9:16, which is better for text.
LED _ projectors An LCD projector resembles an LCD monitor but projects the image onto a huge movie screen (or your room’s white wall), so the image is many feet wide and can be seen by a big audience in a movie theater (or big conference room).
Built-in LCD screens LCD screens are built into all-in- smartphones, tablets, laptops, and all-in-one desktops.
Where to_ put a_ monitor According to researchers such as the government’s National Institute of Occupational Safety
and Health (NIOSH), here’s where you should put a monitor so you'll be comfortable while you’re working at the computer:
Put the monitor slightly lower than your eyes, so you look down at the monitor (instead of looking up, which would strain your neck). When you’re looking at the center of the monitor’s screen, you should be looking down slightly (at an angle that’s 15 degrees below horizontal).
Put the monitor a moderate distance from your face. NIOSH recommended that the distance from your eyes to the center of the monitor’s screen be 17 inches; but that recommendation was made several years ago, when the typical monitor screen was just 12-inch. Now screens are bigger, so you need to sit farther from the screen to see the whole screen: a distance of 23 inches feels good to me.
Keep the room rather dark, to avoid having light reflected off the monitor’s surface. Put the monitor perpendicular to any light source, so no light source shines directly onto the monitor’s screen (which would create an annoying reflection) and no light source shines directly onto the monitor’s back (since such a light source would also be shining into your eyes and create an annoying glare).
Buying: I/O devices 33
Keyboards
The usual way to communicate with the computer is to type messages on the computer’s keyboard.
In 1981, IBM invented a keyboard containing 83 keys. That keyboard is called the XT keyboard, because it was used on the original IBM PC and the IBM PC XT. In 1986, IBM began selling a fancier keyboard, containing 101 keys. It’s called the AT keyboard, because it was used on the IBM PC AT.
In 1995, Microsoft began selling an even fancier keyboard, containing 104 keys. It’s called the Windows keyboard, because it contains extra keys for Windows. “104 keys” became the standard. Microsoft, IBM, and competitors all sold keyboards containing 104 keys, arranged like this:
OEE Esc aE ae err 8 | [Fa F10 ae F12 PrintScreen|Scrol1Lock Pause| L______ Numeric keypad
Insert Pageup NumLock| / * = poof : 7 8 9 D t P D H PgU | elete ageDown ome | 7 gUp 4 5 6 € > + — a ee ee 1 2 3 Shift t End | |PgDn eR Se ec rad aces aI 0 ‘ Ctr1]Windows |] Alt | > Ins Del |Enter fe et
Later, an Fn key was added, squeezed between the Ctrl and Windows keys (which are at the bottom-left corner). Those keys are for desktop computers. Laptop computers are smaller, so they have fewer keys. Good classic laptop computers (such as the Hewlett-Packard G71-340US) have 101 keys, arranged like this:
= —— ESC Fi]F2| F3| 4] [F5|F6]F7|F8| [Fa] rio] raa)r22| [insert delete! [ Hone End |PgUp|PgDn
Numeric keypad
aa!
Backspace a
Smaller laptop computers (such as the Compaq CQ5-110US) have just 86 keys, arranged like this:
Esc ele SeEREEE F9|10|F11 Fi2| Scroll pause] Insert |Delete a | 2
34 Buying: I/O devices
Each keyboard can print all the letters of the alphabet (from A to Z), all the digits (from 0 to 9), and these symbols: Symbol Officialname Nicknames . period dot, decimal point, point, full stop comma cedilla
colon dots, double stop semicolon semi
exclamation point bang, shriek question mark ques, query, what, huh, wildchar
quotation mark apostrophe grave accent
quote, double quote, dieresis, rabbit ears single quote, acute accent, prime left single quote, open single quote, open quote
circumflex caret, hat tilde squiggle, twiddle, not
equals is, gets, takes plus add
minus dash, hyphen underline underscore, under
asterisk ampersand at sign dollar sign number sign percent sign
star, splat, wildcard
amper, amp, and, pretzel
at, whorl, strudel
dollar, buck, string
pound sign, pound, tic-tac-toe percent, grapes
slash forward slash, rising slash, slant, stroke backslash reverse slash, falling slash, backwhack vertical line vertical bar, bar, pipe, enlarged colon
open paren & close paren, left paren & right paren open bracket & close bracket, square brackets curly brackets, curly braces, squiggly braces angle brackets, less than & greater than, from & to
) parentheses ] brackets {} braces
<> brockets
For example, the symbol * is officially called an “asterisk”. More briefly, it’s called a “star”. It’s also called a “splat”, since it looks like a squashed bug. In some programs, an asterisk means “match anything”, as in a card game where the Joker’s a “wildcard” that matches any other card.
In the diagram, I wrote the words “Shift”, “Backspace”, “LeftTab”, “Tab”, “Enter”, “Windows”, and “Menu” on some keys. To help people who don’t read English, keyboard manufacturers usually put symbols on those keys.
The Shift key shows a fat arrow pointing up.