tailieunhanh - Laptops All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies- P12

Laptops All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies- P12: Okay, I’ll admit it: I’ve got a strange biography. I’ve been a writer all my life. My first semi-pro job was sports editor of my high school newspaper. (Go Commodores!) After college I was a political reporter for daily newspapers in Ohio and New York (I covered four national nominating conventions and two Presidential campaigns) and a correspondent for The Associated Press. And then, in 1983, I gave in to my inner geek and became the first Executive Editor of PC Magazine, back in the days when most people asked, “What is a PC?”. | 84 Seeing to a Windows Vista Upgrade Sizing up computer Words One of the elements of hardware evolution has been the increase in the size of the computer word that can be operated upon by the CPU and other components. What s in a word A word is the unit of data manipulated by the computer a particular number of individual bits that are grouped together. Let me try an analogy that isn t about cars. A hungry alligator can open its jaws wide and quickly snap off a large chunk of well just about anything. A tiny piranha can do the same but only with little nibbles. If they re both eating at the same speed matching bite for bite then the alligator is guaranteed to win. What a natural contestant for a hot dog-eating contest don t you think Some situations in the computer world as well as in the Amazon River have even the small mouth or small-word computer taking much smaller bites but operating at a much faster speed than the big mouth. But for most of us it s true that most modern laptops have both a big mouth and a fast mouth at the same time. A computer microprocessor s design is linked to its word size. The registers storage locations within the CPU are usually word sized. The amount of data moved between the CPU and the computer s memory or out of the computer to another device is usually one word at a time. And software is designed to describe colors characters sounds and other information with words. The PC world arrived in the 32-bit age words from 0 through 4 294 967 295 with the introduction of Intel s Pentium CPUs. Today most processors use that design. Just a handful of consumer-grade machines use 64-bit processors paired with 64-bit versions of Windows XP or Windows Vista but the future surely lies in that alligator s mouth. Many current programs for use with a 32-bit version of Windows work under a 64-bit operating system although they may run slower or not play well with other applications. A handful of laptops are now on the market using AMD Turion 64 .