Evolution of Computers

I still remember our first computer. I believe my dad bought a second hand computer from a friend then. I was probably five or six.

Back then, for me, a PC consisted of a TV looking—big monitor, a CPU, an AVR, keyboard and a mouse with a ball-like-thingy under it (traditional mouse).

We didn’t have internet back then, but that was fine because I only used the computer for games and writing short stories.

Our second PC was an HP laptop. It was quite simple and it didn’t have a built-in camera. It had a touch-pad but my mom wasn’t very comfortable in using that so we bought a mouse. Of course, like most mice, it got broken after some time and we just have to purchase a new one when that happens. The mice at that time were the optical kind. We also used an external webcam for video-chatting purposes and such.

We also had an HP desktop which consisted of a slim monitor, a CPU, AVR, a keyboard and a mouse. It also didn’t have a built-in camera so we also used an external webcam.

My PC right now is also an HP but it comes with an internal webcam, it’s faster and it also has way more internal memory.

In my seventeen years of life, the computer has already evolved dramatically and I can just imagine how much better the computers would be five years from now.

Hard Drives, Binary Codes and the Evolution of Storage Devices

HARD DRIVE

Compared to the RAM or Random Access Memory, the Hard Drive is a more permanent storage. The Hard Drive is considered as a non-volatile memory.  

The Hard Drive’s storage capacity is measured in bytes.

1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes

1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes

1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes

1 terabytes = 1024 gigabytes

BINARY CODES

The first computers used decimals, but because of practical reasons, they eventually used binary codes for computers. An example of binary codes is the Morse code.

It is practical because (1) a lot of the computer’s components already used binaries (e.g., electricity has positive or negative charges, magnetic components has north and south poles) (2) binaries are easier to process than decimals and (3) it is easy to interpret.

EVOLUTION OF STORAGE DEVICES FOR COMPUTERS

FLOPPY DISK (5 ¼”)

TYPES:

 Double density – 360 KB

 High Density – 1.2 MB

DISKETTE (3 ½”)

TYPES:

 Double density – 720 KB

 High density – 2 MB [1.44 MB (formatted for PC), 1.4 MB (formatted for Mac)]

CD (Compact Disk)

SIZE: 600 – 700 MB

CD-R (Compact Disk – Recordable)

CD-RW (Compact Disk – Rewritable)

DVD (Digital Video Disk)

SIZE: 4.7 Gigabytes (4.2 Gigabytes formatted)

FLASH DRIVE

EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE

CLOUD