Structure of Computer:(2) Software

 In the last article, we saw a physical structure of computer. In fact, it is　indispensable to our using computer . But, hardware alone cannot realize our comfortable lives. To realize that, software is needed. 


What Is Software?
 While hardware represents physical instruments such as mouse, software is group of dates and commands and composed of two parts mainly: basic software(OS) and application software(Application).
Application software
Application software, which is called 'application', is a kind of software that can  do various expert work such as spreadsheet, database management and so on. For example, browsers such as firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Safari are all applications. These are applications that are used to browse and use WWW. Also,Microsoft's product "Words", Excel", and "Access" are all software. Due to these applications, we can do various and a lot of tasks, leading to our comfortable lives.

chart1: various kinds of browse(IE, Firefox, Choromr)

Basic software(OS)
 There are some people who use "Access" while the other people don't. But Functions such as printing and text entry are used by almost all people. The things that provide these functions are called "basic software" or "operating system". To say formally, OS is defined as the things that connect hardware and application smoothly. "Windows" , "Mac", Unix"and "Linux"  are all OS. Particually, former 3 OSs are used over the world.





Information Sauces
 ・http://www.geocities.jp/hiroyuki0620785/intercomp/Soft.htm 
 ・http://www12.ocn.ne.jp/~k-page/