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How Computers Have Evolved

In: Computers and Technology

Submitted By onoman04
Words 739
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How Computers Have Evolved Computers have drastically changed throughout the years. Comparing the first computers to computers of today would probably give you a good laugh. When computers were invented, the average person didn't use them. In fact, the average person would have had a very difficult time understanding how one operates. When computers were first invented you had to know very complex commands to operate them. The internet wasn't what it is today. Most of the information found on the internet today like shopping, games, and facebook wasn't around when it first came out. In the following paragraphs I will explain how computers have evolved. User interfaces have made some of the biggest changes. The very first computers were command driven. You had to know commands in order to do what you wanted it to. That is no longer true today. Today's computers use a graphical user interface called a GUI. You simply point and click. This makes it so people who don't know much about the way a computer operates can still use it. Using DOS commands was a very difficult process to learn. The invention of GUI interfaces such as Windows and Mac OS has made DOS commands obsolete. The size of computers have changed greatly over the years. Some bigger computer systems still exist but most computers are smaller and easier to handle. What once filled a room is now found in small cell phones. This is made possible by the discovery of new technologies and higher precision manufacturing, allowing us to make devices smaller and more powerful. Also the way the home computer case lays has changed. The case use to lay flat with the monitor sitting on top of it. Most desktop computers today have towers instead. Also monitors are much smaller today. Most computer monitors today are LCD flat panels compared to the big heavy CRT monitors of the past. The speed of computers have also come a long way since it was first invented. The change from vacuum tubes to solid state devices joined with the change of semiconductor manufacturing techniques, has allowed for faster processors to be manufactured. Loading pages, opening programs and nearly anything else you want to do comes at lightening fast speeds today. There is little to no waiting time with computers today. Media has completely changed since the beginning of computers. Even though you could watch videos on older computers, they were very slow, low quality and could take forever to actually load and watch the entire thing. Today, everyone watches videos and they load very quickly and are in high definition. Music is also widely available on today's computers. Digital music has brought a whole new way of listening to music over analog increasing the number of sound channels and improving quality drastically. We now have so much processing power, memory, sound and video cards in our computers today that we can listen to watch and play every type of media with no issues. There were very few ways to store files externally when computers were first invented. Everything was stored on the computer or on a floppy disk. The first floppy disks were 5 1/2 inches and you had to be careful with them because they were flexible and could easily get ruined. Then 3 1/2 floppies were invented. These were smaller and also in a hard plastic case instead of being flexible making them more durable. The problem with floppy disks is the storage space on them is very limited. You can save files and rewrite to them, but when compared to today's storage methods they hold very little information. Today's external storage methods are endless. You can store files on CD's, DVD's, BD's, tape's, external hard drives, USB flash drives and on other equipment such as cell phones. There are countless ways to store files and media externally today. Computers of the past were very small stepping stones to the technology that is used today. Some of us were lucky because we got to be a part of all those changes. Children born today will never know what it was truly like to have a computer during the first years when the personal computer was introduced to the average person. As we find new uses for computing power the computer will continue to evolve to meet our needs. It makes you wonder where the computers of tomorrow will be.

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