Unit Six
Don't forget the memory!

READING


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People often confuse memory and storage. Both are specifications related to a computer's performance. A computer's memory is just like our own - it's fast and easy to get to, but the amount of information it can hold is limited and it may disappear very quickly. More memory can help a computer do more things at one time, and it can make the computer do things faster. Storage is where the computer holds things for later use.

If someone tells you their phone number, you can keep it in your memory, but only for a short time. Also, you can only remember a few new phone numbers. When you write the number down on a piece of paper or in your address book, it's been "stored," just like a computer "stores" information on its hard disk.

Another way to think of the difference between memory and storage is to think of an office workspace. The top of the desk is like memory. If it's small, you can only work well with one or two small projects at one time. With a large desktop, you can work on many small projects or a few large ones. The top of the desk is like a computer's memory. Storage is like the desk's drawers and the office's file cabinets, places where we keep things for later use. The drawers are like the computer's hard disk, and file cabinets would be like other computer storage devices: extra hard disks, Zip disks, MO disks, etc.


Why notkeep a record of your reading score?
That way, you'll be able to see how much you improve.

Questions

  1. Memory and storage are two words which mean the same thing.


  2. More storage space will make your computer faster.

  3. Memory is used for short term storage.

  4. For working on several projects at the same time, you probably want

  5. To store lots of large files like movies, photos, etc., you need

  6. Writing things down is like storing data

  7. Which of these is like memory?

  8. Which of these is NOT like hard disk storage?.

  9. Which of these things WON'T be helped by more memory?.

  10. Why would you want a bigger hard drive?.

correct on first try

How did you do?

Vocabulary

specifications - numbers that tell about a product's performance, size, etc.

workspace - the area where one does his work. This could be a desk, a kitchen counter, or a part of a garage, depending on the work.

Things to think and talk about:

Shopping? Today's starter computers usually come with about 64 to 128 MB of RAM. Their hard disks usually can hold about 6 to 20 GB of data. Yes, and in three years, those numbers will probably double Megabyte MB 1,000,000 bytes one million bytes Gigabytes GB 1,000,000,000 bytes one billion bytes.

Links:

Moore's Law states that the tech industry will double the computing power of a chip every 18 months. Who was George Moore? http://www.macdirectory.com/4U/9905/

The Encyclopedia Britannica link information on RAM:
www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/artÉ

Another useful site on computer hardware information:
www.hardwarecentral.com/hardware

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