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Understanding Operating Systems

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Submitted By sanddc
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Operating Systems
Dontavious Sanders
Kaplan University, Online

Main Title
I remember being in grade school and barely being able to contain my excitement when my parents would take my brothers and I shopping for supplies as the new school year dawned upon us. Fast forward to 2015 and I found myself in the same position, albeit with my approach composed of a much more mature manner. One of the main items on my checklist was a new computer as my current desktop is about eight years-old and it’s really starting to show.
When shopping for this new computer, I needed a device that would meet two certain criteria: It needed to be easily transportable and it needed to be within my very mild budget. Naturally I decided upon a laptop and of course, due to my lack of extra spending cash, I could only afford one on the lower end of the tech spectrum. I understood that this would be the case and was fully confident that my newly acquired tool would be able to perform all of the simple tasks I would require of it.
My Toshiba laptop is running is running Windows 8.1 and sports 4 GB of RAM (only 3.45 GB usable). With only roughly 3.5 GB of RAM, this means that I can’t have a lot of programs running simultaneously. This is especially true with CPU-heavy applications such as Adobe Photoshop. The processor contained within my machine is a dual core AMD E1-2100 APU clocking in at a whopping 1.00 GHz! All jokes aside, this type of processor is the reason why this laptop is so affordable. The processor is like the “brains” of the machine. It is the central unit in a computer that interprets incoming information and carries out the task of function. As I stated above, my laptop is running the latest version of Windows which is Windows 8.1. This is what is known as the operating system. An operating system takes both the hardware and software resources of a particular machine

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