Old PCs can be donated to charities, but call first to see if they want one. Sometimes old computers aren’t worth the trouble. (Ask your kids.)
✔ One item you might not want to recycle is the old PC’s hard drive. If possible, remove it from the old computer’s console. If the hard drive contains sensitive information, have it destroyed. Outfits that shred documents offer hard drive destruction services, should security be a concern to you or your presidential campaign.
A Final Thing to Remember
Now robots, on the other hand! Well, that’s a topic for another book.
Chapter 2
The PC Knobs, Buttons, and Doodads Tour
In This Chapter
▶ Looking at the basic PC hardware
▶ Recognizing different types of PCs
▶ Perusing items on the console
▶ Locating PC connectors, holes, and jacks
▶ Using helpful symbols and colors
If I were to use one word to describe the typical PC design, that word would be uninspired. Face it: The PC is a box. It’s not aerodynamic or sleek or award-winning. No one will confuse a PC sitting on your desk with modern art. People in the year 2045 won’t hang posters of early 21st century PCs on their walls. Sad, but true.
Forgiving its utilitarian look, it’s important to identify some of the basic parts of a computer system, as well as know the purpose behind the many buttons, holes, nooks, and crannies that festoon the plain, dull tin can known as a PC.
The Big Picture
Figure 2-1 shows a typical personal computer system. It may not match what you have, because I’m trying to label the pieces and not stalk you.
Figure 2-1: A typical computer system.
Here are the important items to note in a typical computer system:
Console: The main computer box, and centerpiece of the computer system, is the console. It is not the CPU, though plenty of dorks out there refer to it as such. The console contains the computer’s electronic guts. It’s also home to various buttons, lights, and holes into which you plug the rest of the computer system.
Monitor: The monitor is the device where the computer displays information – its output. On an all-in-one PC, the monitor and console are the same thing. Otherwise, don’t assume that the “computer” is inside the monitor. The monitor merely displays stuff.
Keyboard: The keyboard is the thing you type on and is the primary way you communicate with the computer.
Mouse: No rodent or pest, the computer mouse is a helpful device that lets you work with graphical objects displayed on the monitor.
Speakers: PCs bleep and squawk through a set of stereo speakers, which can be external jobbies you set up (refer to Figure 2-1), speakers built into the console or monitor, or headphones. Pay more money and you can even get a subwoofer to sit under your desk. Now, that will rattle the neighbor’s windows.
External hard drive: You may or may not have one (yet), but an external hard drive is used to back up, or create a safety copy of, the important stuff you store on your computer.
Printer: The printer is where you get the computer’s printed output, also called hard copy.
You may find, in addition to these basic items, other gizmos clustered around your computer, such as a scanner, a second monitor, a high-speed modem, or one of many, many other toys – er, vital computer peripherals.
One thing definitely not shown in Figure 2-1 is the ganglion of cable that dwells behind each and every computer. What a mess! These cables are required when you want to plug things into the wall and into each other. No shampoo or conditioner on Earth can clean up those tangles.
✔ Take a moment to identify the basic PC pieces in your own computer system.
✔ The printer can be attached directly to the console, or it might be available through the computer network.
✔ Chapters in Part II go into more detail on the computer components introduced and illustrated earlier, in Figure 2-1.
✔
All Around the Console
The pride and joy of any computer system is the console, the main box into which all the other pieces plug. Because of the console’s importance, and its surplus of interesting buttons and such, consider reviewing this section to better familiarize yourself with the typical computer console.
Thanks to major conspiracies and a wicked sense of humor in the computer industry, not all PC consoles look the same. To keep you confused, manufacturers like to shake it up a bit when it comes to PC design. So while all the consoles do feature the same basic components and connections, no single prototype or base model exists for me to show you. Instead, I offer Figure 2-2, which illustrates six common PC configurations.
Figure 2-2: The gamut of PC console configurations.
Mini-tower: The mini-tower is the most popular console type. It can sit on top of a desk, right next to the monitor (refer to Figure 2-1). It can also be tucked away out of sight, below the desk.
Desktop: The desktop console type sits flat on the desk. The monitor usually squats on top of the console in the traditional PC configuration.
Mini-desktop: The mini-desktop console is just too cute and tiny, about the size of a college dictionary. That makes it ideal for places where space – and money – is tight. The downside is that these consoles lack internal expansion options.
All-in-one desktop: A popular and trendy computer design combines the console and monitor into a single unit. From the front, the console looks like a monitor, though it’s thicker. On the sides, you find the myriad of connectors and other computer doodads.
Two-in-one tablet:
