Let us identify the major
characteristics of a computer. These can
be discussed under the headings of
speed, accuracy, diligence, versatility
and memory.
Speed
As you know computer can work very
fast. It takes only few seconds
for calculations that we take hours
to complete. Suppose you are
asked to calculate the average
monthly income of one thousand
persons in your neighborhood. For
this you have to add income
from all sources for all persons on
a day-to-day basis and find out
the average for each one of them.
How long will it take for you to do
this? May be one day, two days or
one week? Do you know your
small computer can finish this work
in few seconds? The weather
forecasts that you see every day on
TV is the result of compilation
and analysis of huge amount of data
on temperature, humidity,
pressure, etc. from various places
processed by computers. It takes
few minutes for the computer to
process this huge amount of data
and give the result. You will be
surprised to know that computer can perform several million (1,000,000) of
instructions and even more per second. Therefore, we determine the speed of
computer in terms of microsecond (10-6 part of a second) or Nano-second (10-9 part
of a second). From this you can imagine how fast your computer can perform.
Accuracy
Suppose someone calculates faster
but commits a lot of errors in
computing. Such result is useless.
There is another aspect. Suppose
you want to divide 15 by 7. You may
work out up to 2 decimals
places and say the quotient is
2.14. I may calculate up to 4 decimals
places and say that the result is
2.1428. Someone else may go up
to 9 decimal places and say the
result is 2.142857143. Hence, in
addition to speed, the computer
provides very high level of accuracy
or correctness in computing.
Diligence
A computer is free from tiredness,
lack of concentration, fatigue,
etc. It can work for hours without
creating any error. If millions of
calculations are to be performed, a
computer will perform every calculation with the same accuracy. Due to this
capability it is better
than human being in routine type of work.
Versatility
It means the capacity to perform
completely different type of work.
You may use your computer to
prepare payroll slips. Next moment
you may use it for inventory
management or to prepare electricity
bills or prepare accounts, etc. Therefore,
computer is highly versatile.
Power of Remembering
Computer has the power of storing
huge amount of information or
data. Information can be stored and
recalled as long as you require
it, for any number of years. It
depends entirely upon you, how much
data you want to store in a
computer and when to use or retrieve
these data.
No
IQ
Computer is a dumb machine and it
cannot do any work without
instructions from the user. It is
considered as a faithful idiot that
can only perform the instructions
given to it at tremendous speed
and with high accuracy without
understanding of the work being
done. Computer has to be guided as
to what you want to do and in
what sequence. So, a computer
cannot take its own decision as you
can.
No
Feeling
It does not have feelings or
emotion, taste, knowledge and experience.
Thus, it does not get tired even
after long hours of work. It does
not distinguish between users.
Storage
The computer has an in-built memory
where it can store a large
amount of data. You can also store
data in secondary storage devices
such as floppies and CDs, which can
be kept outside your
computer and can be carried to other computers.
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