HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE: WHAT ARE THEY AND WHAT ARE THEY FOR?

Regardless of the profession or trade to which you dedicate yourself , at some point in life we ​​have needed a computer to carry out daily tasks that in most cases do not require specific knowledge in technology. However, knowing how a computer is composed and the role that its main parts play in its operation can get us out of trouble in some situations. You doubt it?Imagine that one day, for things in life, you have to request technical assistance by phone and, after talking with the collaborator, he tells you that to solve the problem it is necessary to carry out a review of the hardware and software of your pc; Well, something is wrong. You were left with even more problems, right?

A computer is mainly made up of hardware and software. The Royal Spanish Academy describes hardware as the " set of components that make up the material part of a computer " , that is, all the physical parts that make it up, those that you can see. Elements such as the hard disk , keyboard , monitor, mouse, circuits, such as the memory card , the microprocessor or CPU, among others, make up the hardware.

The software , for its part, according to the IEEE " is the set of computer programs, procedures, rules, documentation and associated data, which are part of the operations of a computer system ." In other words, it is nothing more than all the programs or applications that make up a computer and allow it to perform specific tasks. The software instructs the hardware in how it should perform a task, for this reason, all the programs we use on a pc are software: web browsers ( Internet Explorer , Google Chrome , Mozilla Firefox ), operating systems, antivirus , Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point, etc.

Although hardware and software depend on each other to function, each of these parts fulfill a specific role in the operation of a computer and perform particular tasks. What are those functions? Here are the main ones:

1. The software allows you to manage the resources that the computer's operating system needs to handle programs and applications .
2. The software serves as a bridge for the user to interact with the hardware through it.  
3. Without the software it would not be possible to tell the computer that you need to print a document.
4. The hardware, on the other hand, receives the orders from the software so that a document can be printed using complementary hardware (printer).
5. In a touch screen pc, the hardware allows you to select, using virtual buttons, options and commands.
6. The hardware enters data into the pc system using numeric and alphanumeric keyboard commands.
7. Thanks to the hardware, the acoustic signals from the microphone are converted into electrical signals.