Preparing for Test 1.

The "A+" questions in the textbook are your best guide. Please pay attention to the screenshots where they leave filling in the blanks to you! Unfortunately, there are no questions for the Internet part.
You may want to print out this page for reference. Please feel free to ask questions!

1. Computer hardware:

Please keep in mind that the purpose of computers in your textbook is defined as Input, Output, Processing and Storage of information. We might add Communication to this list. For each item in the following list you must be able to answer the following two questions:

• What does it do in my computer? (What is its function?)
  
• What is its most important characteristic, and what is should it be on a contemporary home desktop?

Examples:

• RAM is the memory of your computer ( primary storage ) , that's where both the programs and data are stored while it's working. Size: 8 - 32 Mbytes, below 8M it's too small to run Win95, above 32M is too expensive).
• Hard disk is where the bulk of data and programs is stored ( secondary storage ). It can stay there for almost indefinite time, and it's much larger than RAM, but writing and retrieving data is much slower than RAM. Size: 500 Mbytes - 4 Gigabytes.
• Cache is a small amount of really fast memory, used for repetitive memory operations in order to speed them up. Size: 256 Kbytes or 512 Kbytes.
• Video Graphics Card is responsible for what you see on your display and is designed for faster video effects. The primary characteristic is the size of video memory (currently 1M to 4M), which determines the resolution of your screen (640 x 480 pts, 800 x 600 pts, 1024 x 768 pts) and how many colors you can have at one time (256 - 32 million) in each resolution.

Refer to your Homework 1 and the first chapter of the textbook. The list of topics follows.

• Processor
• RAM
• Hard Drive
• Floppy Drive
• CDROM drive
• Input/Output devices:
• Types of input devices
• Printers (dot matrix, inkjet, laser) and their relative speeds and resolutions
• Displays, video standards and resolutions.
• Modems (speed, inside/outside).
• Sound Cards, Multimedia
• Video Graphics Card

2. Windows 95.

What You Should Know About Windows-95:

• What is an application, how to start it.
• What is a folder, how to see its contents, how to create a new folder.
• Parts of a standard window: title bar, minimize/maximize/close buttons, borders.
• How to move, resize, maximize/minimize and close a window.
• What is the Task Bar and what it's used for.
• How to copy, move and delete files and folders. What is the difference between copying and moving a file?
• How to rename a file?
• How to create, edit, and save documents in Notepad.

Intricacies of the file system:

• What is the complete path to a file.
• What is the extension of a filename. What is it used for?

Example:
Suppose that on your floppy you have the folder called Com1105, inside it a folder called HW1 and inside the latter a text file called Monday. Then the complete path name (the full name of the file from the point of view of the system) is

                      A:\Com1105\HW1\Monday.txt

Refer to your textbook, the chapters on Windows95 and Windows Explorer. IMPORTANT: Do the "In the Lab" activities in these sections!

3. The Internet.

What You Should Know About the Internet:

• What are the Internet and the World Wide Web.
• What is a server, and what the names of computers mean.
• What is an account, a login name, a password and what it means to login. (See your Lynx handout for this.)
• What are hypertext, hyperlinks, HTTP and HTML.
• What are WWW, web site, web page, web browser, home page.
• How to navigate in MS Explorer (links, Back/Forward, History, Bookmarks aka Favorites).
• How to save data from the Internet (saving pages, texts, pictures, links).

Example:
This page is at

   http://lynx.neu.edu/home/httpd/s/sbratus/test1-prep.html

where lynx.neu.edu is the name of the computer that acts as server, and the rest is the path to the actual source file test1-prep.html of this page through various folders. See if you can identify all of these in the above URL. Practice with other URLs. Browse the Web outside the US and determine where those pages are located.