What Are The Characteristics Of A Computer?

All computers are designed to perform the same basic functions and these characteristics are mainly technical rather than aesthetic. Computers may differ in design but in order to legally be placed into the computing market, must reach certain consumer expectations or will not be acceptable.

Most consumers are looking for a computer that is reliable, yet if the product is on the market then it is bound to have undergone and passed the numerous technological tests before release. Therefore, all computers and reliable and meet these characteristics but it just depends upon the efficiency of the users' computer skills as to whether they remain satisfied with their purchase.

• Computer speed

It is necessary that a computer completes certain tasks within a certain period of time. If the software is faulty or out of date then the user will become frustrated at the lengthy amounts of time it may take to complete simple functions. Work processing must be efficient and response time relatively short. Data package download must have a combination of a short transmission time and high bandwidth ability.

• Storage capacity

As computer technology has progressed, databases have grown in size but have physically become smaller.  This allows relatively small laptops and net books to hold a large amount of downloaded data such as films and computer programs without hindering the overall speed of the product.

• Productivity

This refers to the number of functions a computer can perform. A basic hard drive cannot cope with complex plug in and additional features and this may frustrate many users as modern consumers have high expectations of computing technology.

It is interesting to point out that as the basic characteristics of computers are all the same, technological problems with computers originate from human error and not faults within the hardware.

Speed: Computers work at very high speed and are much faster than humans. A second is very large time period time for computer. A computer can perform billions of calculations in a second. The time used by a computer to perform an operation is called the processing speed. Computer speed is measured in Mega Hertz (MHz).

Storage: A computer can store a large amount of data permanently. User can use this data at any time. We can store any type of data in a computer. Text, graphic, pictures, audio and video files can be stored easily. The storage capacity of the computer is increasing rapidly.

Processing: A computer can process the given instructions. It can perform different types of processing like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It can also perform logical functions like comparing two numbers to decide which one is the bigger etc.

Accuracy: Accuracy means to provide results without any error. Computers can process large amount of data and generate error-free results. A modern computer performs millions of operations in one second without any error.

Communication: Most computers today have the capability of communicating with other computers. We can connect two or more computers by a communication device such as modem. These computers can share data, instructions, and information. The connected computer are called network.

A computer is a wonderful electronic device. It has many characteristics. First of all a computer is a very fast device. A powerful computer can do 4 to 5 million arithmetic and logical operations in a second. With more development in the computer the speed and capacity increases day by day. Another important characteristic of computer is its accuracy. A computer can never make mistakes and it perform all the given tasks with 100% accuracy. It there is any mistake then it is due to the human not the computer. Versatility is another important feature of the computer.

In school and colleges computers are used for teaching the students in much better and more interesting way. Banks are the big organizations that depend on computer for performing their all tasks. Special computer are build fro hospitals, defense purpose. In airports, railways stations, traffic control, auto service centers, engineering, communication, office use etc. another important thing about computer is you can use your computer during traveling and can easy carry and use them anywhere. Computer has an excellent memory and if you save anything in its memory then computer never forget. For increasing the capacity of computer different memory storage devices can be mounted on the mother board such as RAM, ROM etc.

Speed: a computer is a very fast device. It can perform in a few second the amount of work that a human being can do in an entire year. If he worked day and night and did nothing else to put it different manner, while talking the aped of the computer we do not talk in terms of second or even milliseconds. The accuracy of a computer is consistently high and the degree of accuracy of a particular computer depends upon its designs. But for a particular computer each and every calculation is performed with the same accuracy. Errors can occur in computer but these are mainly due to human rather than technological weakness.

Versatility is one of the most wonderful things about the computer. One moment it is preparing the results of particular examination the next moment it is busy preparing electricity bills and in between, it may helping an office secretary to trace an important letter in seconds. All that is required to change its talent is to slip in a new program into it. Computers are devoid of emotions. They have no feelings and no instincts because they are machine. Although men have succeeded in building a memory for the computer but no computer possess the equivalent of a human heart and soul.