10 Things You Did Not Know About Your Computer

Ask anyone involved in computer repair in Toms River NJ and they’ll tell you that despite being such an everyday part of our lives, computers are highly complex machines that can sometimes go over the heads of even the smartest people you know.

They can’t be escaped, though. Computers are as woven into the fabric of life in this world just like radio, TV and books are. And just like radio, TV and books, there are some truly interesting things about the world of computers you may not know. Here are 10 of them:

• Early computers were HUGE. They took up entire rooms, and relied on vacuum tubes and punch cares to read data and perform calculations. We’ve come a long way!
• The little smart phone you are holding in your hand has more processing power than all of the computers on board the Apollo 11 lunar lander combined. The lunar lander put men on the moon. What have you done with your phone?
• Most people know what hardware and software is, but do you know what firmware is? Hardware refers to actual devices and components, such as monitors and hard drives. Software is the programs and applications that run on hardware. Firmware exists in the middle. It’s the software that is embedded onto a piece of hardware to make it run. It usually can’t be modified, at least not easily, and is invisible to most users.
• If you think you’ve seen all there is to see online, think again. There are over 20 BILLION web pages on the Internet, and that number is growing every day.
• The modern era of personal computers from home only came about in the 1980s. Before that, computers were big, expensive devices only used by businesses, universities, and the government.
• When it comes to the world of computers and technology, the garage can be a magical place. Google, Microsoft, Apple and HP were all started in garages! Your local Toms River NJ computer repair service probably works out of a bigger office than that!
• The number of Internet users keeps growing by leaps and bounds. By 2015, the number had climbed to 3 billion people – almost half of the planet’s population!
• Hard disk drives have been around only since 1979. The first one was developed by Seagate and had a capacity of 5MB, or about enough to hold a single song today.
• The IBM PC was developed by a team of 12 engineers at IBM who were playfully referred to as The Dirty Dozen, after the beloved war movie of the same name.
• The term “debugging,” which means running through a program in order to find bugs and glitches, and then fixing those problems, was coined by Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, the first female admiral in the US Navy. Interestingly, she came up with the term when she had to remove a moth – yes, a MOTH – from a computer!

Interesting stuff that we bet you never considered the last time you took your PC in for Computer repair in Toms River NJ.