Computer Software

Computers are utilized in business organisations for:
• Accounting
• Budgeting
• Financial forecasting
• Employee management
• Sales analysis
• Inventory management

Software is a set of instructions that enables the user to interact with a computer, its hardware, or perform tasks.

A device driver is a system software that operates or controls a particular hardware device (e.g., graphic card, printer, scanner, etc.) that is connected to a computer. It allows a computer to communicate with these internal or external peripheral devices.

Firmware is a small and permanent software programmed into a read-only memory.

In information technology, application software is a computer program designed to help people perform an activity.

You can touch physical parts of a computer; these parts are called hardware.

An operating system is a program that manages the computer hardware. It provides an container environment in which other programs can work.

The main purpose of an OS is to provide basic functionality needed by users so that users can run programs in a convenient and efficient manner.

The component of an operating system that defines the interface between the operating system and its users is called the shell.

The main objectives of the operating system can
be summarized as follows:

• Enables the users to use computer in a
convenient and efficient manner
• Hides complexity of the hardware
resources from the users
• Acts as an intermediary between the
computer hardware and its users.
• Manages the resources of a computer system
• To keep track of who is using which
resource, granting resource requests,
according for resource using and mediating
conflicting requests from different
programs and users
• Provides efficient and fair sharing of
resources among users and programs

The most prominent characteristics of Operating Systems can be summarized as follows:

• Memory Management
• Processor Management
• File Management
• Device Management
• Protection and Security

Booting is the process of starting or restarting a computer.

Linux is an operating system originally designed by Linus Torvalds while a student at the University of Helsinki. It is non-proprietary software and thus
it is freely available along with its source code.

An office suite includes the following application software:

• A word processor
• A spreadsheet application
• A presentation software

Word processing software allows users to

• change margins
• insert footnotes
• find and replace terms
• place a header and footer at the top and
the bottom of a page
• use different fonts (character design), font size
(character scale), and font style (character appearance such as bold, italic and underline).

A spreadsheet programs, such as Microsoft excel, is used for reviewing and editing spreadsheets. Spreadsheets can be thought of tables filled with data in the form of numbers, dates, strings etc. Spreadsheet programs are powerful tools for getting meaning out of raw data. It helps to discovers trends and patterns using data bars, spark lines, color coding, and icons. Even helps summarize and illustrate insights by charts and graphs.

A presentation is a speech or talk in which a demonstration, lecture, idea/topic, or piece of work is shown and explained to an interested audience.

Geographically Dispersed Team is  a group of learners or workers living in
different parts of a region, nation, continent, or globe and rely on communication technology such as electronic mails, instant messaging, and video or voice conferencing services in order to collaborate.

Electronic mail, e-mail in short, is used for for asynchronous communication. Users can obtain an e-mail address from several e-mail service providers,
such as yahoo.com, gmail.com and hotmail.com

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a protocol that facilitates synchronous communication in the form of text. It allows several users to chat each other simultaneously.