The Essential Guide to Computing: The Story of Information Technology - Softcover

Walters, E. Garrison

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0130194697 ISBN 13: 9780130194695

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 2000

Synopsis

The Essential Guide to Computers is an intelligent, thorough, friendly, and up-to-date explanation of computer technology. It's perfect for smart professionals who want to understand the technology -- but don't have computer science or engineering degrees! Learn how computers have evolved from early, room-sized monoliths to PCs to tomorrow's "information appliances." Understand each key hardware component of a contemporary computer, including microprocessors, memory, storage, I/O, and displays. Understand the role of systems architecture in the orderly evolution of computing technology; then learn what operating systems are and how they compare. Understand the role of programming languages and what they try to achieve; including the basics of object-orientation, today's leading approach to software development. Next, learn how computers can be organized into many kinds of networks, from LANs to the Internet; and how this enables new kinds of software and applications, including e-commerce. For anyone who wants to understand the fundamentals of how computers and networks work.

About this title

Review:

Lots of circumstances conspired to make information technology what it is today. Business decisions (both wise and foolish), scientific discoveries (old and recent), marketing campaigns (founded in truth and otherwise), and plenty of random chance have played parts in defining the industrial, social and cultural phenomena that personal and business computing have become.

The Essential Guide to Computing: The Story of Information Technology tells the technical, commercial and social story behind the electronic computer and related technologies, such as telecommunications and software development. Along the way, author E. Garrison Walters reveals a lot of general knowledge about computers.

As you read this book, you can't avoid picking up the little technical facts that have become part of our culture, particularly its younger parts. What's an embedded operating system? What's object-oriented programming? What is the open-source movement? Walters teaches you enough about these subjects--and the ways they fit together--to enable you to speak intelligently about them and perform further research as your needs require.

You will enjoy this book regardless of your level of computer expertise or your area of specialisation. It's essentially a general-interest non-fiction book, and a good one at that. --David Wall

From the Back Cover:

• The complete, easy-to-understand guide to IT―now and in the future!
• Computers, networks, and pervasive computing
• Hardware, operating systems, and software
• How networks work: LANs, WANs, and the Internet
• E-business, the Web, and security

The guide for ANYONE who needs to understand the key technologies driving today's economy and high tech industries!

You can't afford not to understand the information revolution that's sweeping the world-but who's got time for all the acronyms and hype most technology books give you? The Essential Guide to Computing demystifies the digital society we live in with an intelligent, thorough, and up-to-date explanation of computer, networking, and Internet technologies. It's perfect for smart professionals who want to get up to speed, but don't have computer science or engineering degrees! You'll find up-to-the-minute coverage on all of today's hottest technologies including:

• The evolution of computing: from the room-sized "monoliths" of the 1950s to today's global Internet
• Preview of the next revolution: "pervasive computing"
• Computer hardware: microprocessors, memory, storage, I/O, displays, and architecture
• Windows, Macintosh, UNIX/Linux, DOS, NetWare, Palm: what operating systems do, and how they compare
• Programming languages: from machine language to advanced object-oriented technologies
• Key software applications: databases, spreadsheets, word processing, voice recognition, and beyond
• Microsoft and the software industry: where they stand, where they're headed
• How networks work: LANs, WANs, packet switching, hardware, media, and more
• The Internet, e-commerce, and security
• Enterprise applications: data warehousing, Web-centered development, and groupware

Whether you're a consumer, investor, marketer, or executive, this is your start-to-finish briefing on the information technologies that have changed the world-and the coming technologies that will transform it yet again!

About this edition

• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0130194697
• ISBN 13: 9780130194695
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 528