4Feb/100
Computer Science: Study Notes [Types of Computers] – yr 12
| Handhelp Computers | Single User computers that provice ease of portability because of their small size. Such as PDA's, mobiles phones so forth |
| Portable Computers | Can be caried around easily eg laptops, notebooks, sub-notebooks or tablet computers |
| Thin client computers | Low-cost centrally managed computer with no extra drives, such as CD/DVD or expansions slots. They have limited capabilities and perform only essential applications. Thin clients download software from a network when needed making support, distribution and updating of software easier and less expensive - one example of this is cloud computing. |
| Desktop Computers | Relatively small, inexpensive single-user computer systmes that are highly versatile. Desktop computers can provide sufficient memory and stoage for most business computing desks. |
| Workstations | Workstations are more powerfull than PC's but still small enough to fit on a desk. They are used to support engineering and technical users who perform heavy mathematical computing, computer aided design (CAD). Users need powerful CPUs large amounts of main memory and high resolution graphics displays. |
| Servers | Servers are computers used by many users to perform a specific task, such as running nework or internet applications. Servers usually have large memory and stoage capacities along with fast and efficient communications abilities. Servers offer scalability easy to increase the processing capability so it can handle more users data in a given period. Scaling up adds more powerful processors Scaling out adds many more equal or even less powerful processors to increase the total data procession capacity. |
| Web Server | Handles traffic and communications -- needs to be refined.. |
| Internet Caching Server | Stores websites that are used frequently by an organisation |
| Enterprise server | Stores and provides access to programs that meet the needs of an entire organisation. |
| File server | Stores and coordinates program and datafiles |
| Transaction Server | processes business transactions |
| Blade server | houses many computer motherboards that include one or more processors, computer memory and computer storage and computer network connections. They all share a common power supply and air cooling source with a a single chassis. This makes the blade server more powerful and less expensive than a traditional system. |
| Server Farm | When an organisation houses a lage number of servers in the same room where the access to the machines can be controleld easil managed and maintained the facility is called a server farm. |
| Mainfraae Computers | A large powerful computer shared by doezens or hundres of concurrent users connected to the machine over a network. The mainframe computer much reside in a data center with special heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment to control the remperature, humidity and dust levers. Most mainframes are kept in a secure data center with limited access to room. Mainframes can handle the millions of daily transactions associated with airline hotel/motel reservation systems. |
| Supercomputers | The most powerful computers with the fastest processing speed and highest preformance. |
| Microcomputer | Small personal computers PC's that are based on an intergrated circuit or chip called a microprocessor and are designed for use in homes and small organisations. |