[Music] hi there Learners and welcome to module 1.3 of your grade 12 curriculum where we are looking at Hardware recommendations so we are looking at this in terms of buying a computer we also want to touch on the value of ICT and then some newer Technologies so let's jump in our whole scenario today is based around buying a computer you go into the shop you're looking for something new you need to maybe upgrade whatever the case may be but before you do that you need to ask yourself a couple of questions you need to consider whether number one you needed to be mobile or not you need to also ask yourself well does this machine need to do a specific task um what is the purpose of this what am I going to be doing with it because all those considerations need to be taken into consideration so the hardware specs in relation to the software that you're are going to be using do you need an entry-level computer or more advanced one what sort of operating system is going to be provided is there an operating system on this machine we need to remember that you want to buy what's best for your budget or what your budget will allow and the three probably the most important Hardware components are your processor your RAM and the size of your storage so these are things we need to take into consideration so let's look at it in a little bit more detail inside our system unit or our tower case but remember we call it a system unit we're looking at things like the CPU our processor remember this is responsible for running programs and processing data its speed is measured in gigahertz and it can sometimes have multiple CES it's like having more than one processor but it's not physically one more than one processor right there are different brand names like AMD or Intel that influences the power of that particular process for example AMD processes are more geared towards gaming than your Intel right so you need to take that into consideration for most people the standard entry level processes are fine for personal users Soho users and the mobile users but if you are going to be a power user then you need to buy the best CPU that you can afford because you are going to need a more powerful one the next one is memory or our RAM and there we can see there's our Ram there's the brand name cor very well-known brand expensive um and our DDR indicating what type of memory um this is so our Ram is a to temporary storage area for programs and data being processed um as I mentioned it's also identified in terms of DDR dims ddr4 this is probably the most important part when it comes to Ram is that in order for an operating system to recognize and access and use more than 4 gigs of RAM it must be a 64bit version so these are questions you need to ask before you actually purchase that particular um machine now for any user the more memory you have the more memory you have installed the better it's going to be and obviously for our power users again um working with video editing programs you are going to need a lot more RAM then we move on to the hard drive right our hard disk drive it's the main permanent storage area for all of your data and software now we know that our file server in a network that provides services to clients in the network has a number of hard drives because this is where it stores all of the users files and folders besides the capacity these hard drives can be identified in adverts by terms such as SATA which is the connector and the rotational speed so remember these are discs that rotate so they can tell you that it's like a 7,200 RPM hard drive um and the higher that number the quicker it's actually going to respond but then you also have your ssds which use technology similar to flash memory which means there's no moving Parts they do work faster and most users will never F the hard drive or PC although many do it today okay so you need to just bear that in mind and again you need to ask the question what am I going to be using this for that's going to determine the size of the hard drive that you'll need some folks I know use a combination of the two so in my gaming laptop I've got a 500 gig SSD that's got windows and my programs and everything on it and then for all my data storage I've got another 1.5 TB hard drive traditional hard Drive um where you know all my data is kept so my PC boots up very quickly um it's able to open programs quickly but all of the the other data is kept on a separate drive so you can you know look at customizing according to what you need then inside your system unit what is this this is a graphics card video card what is the purpose of this remember we spoke about this when we spoke about expansion slots right this is a separate circuit board as you can see there this plugs into the motherboard into one of those slots in the motherboard and it has its own video memory and GPU that's why you have this fan over here okay so this fan actually keeps the card and everything in it cool now your entry-level computers have integrated Graphics bolt into the CPU or motherboard so it's not always required to have this um but if you are going to be doing any gaming any video editing sometimes um you would need something a little extra as well they do add extra processing power which is essential for 3D Graphics video editing or high-end gaming as I mentioned right as we continue with the system unit now this is one that's quite optional because most of the time you don't need this most as I mention I think in previous presentations or previous slides um most laptops don't even come with these Optical drives anymore but we're just going to go through it the purpose of knowing what it is so our DVD drive is an optical drive that can play read and write CDs and DVDs they are less important than they used to be because they've been replaced by external hard drives flash drives and now you can get everything on the internet and transfer everything that way as well um you do get external ones so if you need to you can but this is really not something you often take into consideration again it all depends on what you are going to be doing we continue with the system unit now because now we look at the ports now when you are especially buying a laptop this becomes incredibly important because um sometimes they are limited to the number of USB ports that they have um maybe you're looking for a memory card reader you can get peripherals that can plug in so it's not a huge train smash but our ports are used to connect external devices to the computer most devices can connect to a USB port so you want to have at least 3 to four USB ports um some then have you know extra ports like an HDMI or VGA or so on um some have USBC others have Thunderbolt um you should have a network cable as well but others if they don't have that they have the Wi-Fi capability um which is really built in as well so these are just some of the things again this for me especially when you buy a laptop is something to consider once again you need to ask the question what am I going to be using this for what is the purpose so our system unit case as well now when it comes to gaming and any video editing and things like that and you've you've got all these big components um most of the time you don't really have much of a choice but when you are building it yourself and gaming you generally want a case that's going to allow for more air flow and this is why you'll see in these gaming cases that they have all these fans and these colors and things like that um these RGB lights that they have in and stuff like that and it's mostly there just to allow the air flow because it's building up so much heat now the size and design of the case that will affect what components can be installed as well like if you get a very small case you're going to have to get you know your the the form factor of your components is going to be smaller as well then we look at the devices that connect to the computer so The Mouse and the keyboard I mean these are the most commonly used types of input devices you might look at ergonomic considerations depending on how much time you are going to be spending working with a mouse and keyboard do you want Wireless do you want cabled are you a mobile user are you going to be a power user that's going to play a major role in what type of mouse and keyboard you end up buying and trust me there are a lot of different ones out there what about your monitor now again depending on what you're going to be doing um that's going to play a huge role this is the most common output device for soft copy remember soft copy is our digital what we see on the screen and I mean you get different sizes of monitors you get touch screens you get different quality monitors you can play around with monitors that have a different refresh rate for most users an entry level is fine but again our power user he the Troublemaker here our power user is the one that needs they always need something more um in my case where I'm sitting now I've got three monitors in front of me so one is recording the other one is displaying the presentation that you see on the page and then the third one is showing me everything else that's going on on my PC so it just depends what type of user you are and what you are going to be doing with it then our printer same story We Know It produces the hard copy right we know that but you need to look at the type of printer are you going to be printing black and white are you going to be printing color do you need high quality prints um most printers these day are these days are multi-function printers which means they don't just print but they can copy they can scan some can scan an email um others can fax you know things like that again it's going to depend on you if you're a mobile user you might go for a mobile printer um but again these are just some of the questions that you need to ask and some of the things you need to bear in mind then looking at things like external storage now for me because I move between computers I've got an external drive so I'll do something on my laptop copy that over bring it over to the next PC work with it there it's not ideal but that's what I end up doing and we're talking about storage devices that connect to the computer so again personal users normal users we you know just use a flash drive that's fine um but as soon as you start having a lot more data we start moving to external hard drives and then for the Soho because they are business and the power user they end up using larger hard drives U because obviously the size of the files are a lot bigger as well then we've got scanners and barcode scanners now we know image scanners capture images or barcode scanners read barcodes um a personal user will seldom need a scanner because we can usually just use our phone take a picture we use a app do that but again the Soho user or power user and you can see how the Soho users coming in here now they need to convert hard copy documents into editable text that might need a scanner with the particular software the OCR um software uh it would be if they are doing that it's always going to be a good idea for them to get a good quality scanner remember we need a good quality scanner we need what has been scanned in to be a good quality as well and the result will end up being a good quality right and then we have devices for disabled users now I've been through this with you before so please don't forget there is a difference between the impaired and blind user between the impaired and the deaf user and then the motor control so these are the things we have gone through before they just mentioned them again um and you can Breeze through that then we look at the value of ICT now we have touched on the fact that ICT um provides us with the reason why we use it is because provides us with efficiency productivity and accuracy and we've got no issue with that we're very glad that it can do all of those things for us but this also affects the choice of Hardware that we use so if you typing in a lot of text you want to get a good quality keyboard if you're doing video editing you want to have the largest fastest possible hard drive you want to make sure that you've got enough memory you maybe want to go for two monitors um sometimes people go just for one massive monitor you want to look at your CPU as well all of those things maybe you are converting existing documents into digital format and you might need to go for an automatic sheet sheet feeding scanner right so I'm just showing you that while ICT provides efficiency productivity and accuracy in that's why we end up using these things it does play a role in the choice of Hardware that we end up buying in order to help us do these things okay what about Competitive Gaming y there's so much to choose from the right gaming keyboard the right Mouse the right joystick maybe you're creating digital art maybe you're selling products at a till okay all of this all of this requires us to do a little bit of thinking before we end up buying the products then accessibility now ICT makes knowledge and resources accessible to people all over the world for example we can do remote surgery um data and information we can access using the internet there's distance education there's cell phone banking um making computers more accessible for disabled users so ICT is really expanding um to make sure that everyone can access the implementation of the technology I mean I for me personally I just I would worry a bit about this if I'm working over an internet connection cuz if the guy's busy with the remote surgery and the internet connection Cuts up yeah it's not going to end well but anyway um but distance education I mean so many people are being educated via distance in uh distance education institutions so you can see how the technology is making things accessible for more people in a number of of different ways and and it's just increasing every single day then when it comes to new technology what we find and what we really need to understand about new technology is just a few things number one new technology is normally supposed to be smaller cheaper faster and more powerful than what we have today although we know that's not always the case but generally that's how it's supposed to go it will generally use more and more senses it will be designed to be mobile the battery life have you ever noticed how the adverts consistently when it comes to cell phones tablets they always talking about battery life the battery life lasting longer looking at 10 hours 12 hours because that's what it's geared uh towards doing that's that's how it's been designed it's been designed to be constantly connected and communicating so in order to do that you need a longer battery life it needs to be mobile it needs to be smaller in some cases it needs to be more powerful as well and it needs to be able to combine newer Technologies to allow easier and more effective input and output and folks that's it for our module I'll see you in the next one