Hardware

Hardware refers to the physical components of a computing device that you can touch. That includes the computer case, the components inside the case, and all the devices that you can connect externally to the device such as the monitor, mouse, keyboard and printer. These external devices are called peripherals.

Note how the various hardware components fit into the information processing cycle.

Input

Input is the data and instructions that are given to a computing device. Providing input is the fist step of getting a computer to do anything useful for us.

• a computing device works under the control of instructions.

• instructions can be given to a device in the form of programs and commands issued by the user

  • an app is a set of instructions which is loaded into memory when you run the app

  • apps respond to commands given by users, for example when you click on the Font Size command in Word.