About Hardware

Hardware is the machinery part of your computer -- its mechanical, magnetic, electronic, and electrical components -- including both the parts inside the case and any peripheral devices (like printers and scanners) that may be attached to it.

Since the early days of computing, a race has been afoot between hardware designers and software devleopers. Less than a decade ago, a computer with a 266 MHz processor and 64 MB of RAM was state-of-the-art and would run almost any available Windows application with resources to spare. Nowadays, such a computer would barely be able to boot the latest Windows versions, much less be able to run any applications.

As of this writing (in early 2004), an average, off-the-shelf, new computer comes with a processor running in the 2 - 3 GHz range, and with between 256 MB and 512 MB of RAM -- roughly ten times what was typical less than a decade ago. And yet if history is to be our guide, even today's hardware and its massive capabilities will become obsolete as newer, more powerful, and (unfortunately) more bloated software is written to exploit those capabilities.

Hardware Components

Computers are very complex machines with thousands of parts. But there are certain components that tend to "define" a computer and whose specifications are usually printed on advertisements for new computers. Unfortunately, these specs usually just make people who are new to computers even more confuzled, because they have no idea what the numbers in those specifications mean. So we've decided to explain, in plain English, a little bit about what the most commonly quoted specs in new computer ads mean.

You can click the links below to jump to any page in this topic, but we suggest you start by clicking the "Next: The Processor" link on the bottom of the page to view all the pages in order.

• The Processor
• RAM (Random Access Memory)
• The Hard Drive
• Removable Storage Drives and Devices
• Video Cards
• Sound Cards
• Network Cards and Modems