Computers as a Second LanguageComputers as a Second LanguageComputer Fundamentals
WHAT IS MEANT BY THE TERM
"WINDOWS"? Many people used to fear using computers because they didn't
understand the cryptic language that people typed at the keyboard to get their
computers to do something. For example, suppose you had just finished typing an
important essay about the economy and you wanted to make another copy onto
another disk just in case you damaged the original disk. You would have to
typed something like this:copy
C:\WP\reports\economy A:\homeworkCryptic, eh? In order to make this job a lot easier, another method
was devised by Apple Computers in 1985 when they designed the Macintosh.
Instead of having to type complex gibberish, the computer screen shows tiny
pictures representing different disks and all you do is point to the picture of
the disk you want the essay to be copied onto. You point by using a mouse which
is a small box connected with a wire to the computer. When you move the box on
a flat surface an arrow moves on the computer screen mimicking your hand
movements. If you move your hand to the right, the arrow on the screen moves to
the right. To copy the essay, you just position the arrow on the screen so that
it sits on the picture of the disk you want to copy the essay onto. Then you
just press a little button on the mouse and presto, it's done! Pure child's
play.The Macintosh computer system is
considered to be very user friendly because its mouse-driven pictorial display
is intuitive and does not require a degree in computer science to operate.
Shortly after the Apple Macintosh appeared in the computer marketplace,
Commodore introduced the AMIGA computer which also
had a mouse-driven pictorial interface called Workbench. Atari
introduced a similar idea called GEM
(Graphics Environment
Manager). As IBM sales continued to decline and in order to
compete in the marketplace, IBM designed their own pictorial interface called
the Workplace Shell (or WPS). Another
company, Microsoft Corporation, designed yet another mouse-driven interface
called Windows. Finally, owners of IBM or IBM-compatible
computers could have the same type of user friendly interface that other
computer systems had used for years.Microsoft has done
an aggressive job of marketing Windows so it is by far the most popular
graphical interface seen today. Because of the graphical nature of the Windows
interface, the CPU is taxed with the additional overhead of things to keep
track of (like where is the mouse pointing at any given time). Early PCs that
ran Windows tended to bog down because of the demands on the CPU and their
smaller memory capacities. Today's computers are equipped with fast
microprocessors and lots of RAM, so the Windows interface runs very
smoothly.Apple Macintosh and
AMIGA computers fly along beautifully with their
graphical pictorial interfaces. The reason for this is because the entire
interface is designed for the machine and designed to work specifically with
the Operating System ROM.Microsoft is not
standing still -- they have released Windows 2000,
Windows ME (Millennium Edition) and Windows
98SE (Second Edition) to work very efficiently with today's 32-bit
computers. |
