Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)
Mostly obsolete now, PDAs used to be widely used by
businesspeople to track appointments and contact information. Palm was one of the most
popular makers of these devices in the 1990s and 2000s. PDAs fell out of fashion when
smartphones began offering the same or better computing capabilities.
EXERCISE 4.1
Comparing Portable Computers
Visit the websites of several major manufacturers of portable computers, and compare the
specifi cations of their tablet or subnotebook (netbook) line. Pick one or two models of each
brand and note the following:
Price
Screen size
Amount of RAM
Processor type and model
Ports
Operating system
Special features (if any)
Setting Up a Computer
As a Strata-certifi ed computer user, you should be able to take a new computer out of its
boxes and set it up. Doing so mainly consists of being able to plug the cables for the various
components into the right sockets on the back of the computer. In the following sections,
you'll learn about some of the basic connector types you may encounter, as well as how
to evaluate voltage and power requirements and how to turn on and use the PC and its
peripherals.
Desktop Computer Form Factors
The
case
of a desktop computer is the big rectangular box to which everything else
connects. There are different sizes and shapes of cases. A case's size and orientation is
called its
form factor.
Almost all computer cases these days are
towers
, which means they're taller than they
are wide or deep. A
full tower
is one that has lots of expansion bays for drives (like CD or
DVD drives). There's no offi cial standardization as to how many bays a case has to have
