Stage Four of Computers -Determine the following on a computer system:

Remember that you should have a notepad or printout of your worksheet. The worksheet is located at the lower part of your Computer Screen. If you do not have a printout then take notes so you can put the information needed in the boxes.

a. Processor speed
b. Storage capacity of the hard drive
c. Memory capacity (RAM)

Windows

Click the "Start" button. Then click "My Computer" with the right mouse button, and select "Properties". This will bring up a window. Select the "General" tab, and the computer will display the processor speed, memory capacity, as well as a number of other bits of information.

To find the storage capacity, click the "Start" button and then use the left mouse button to select "My Computer". This will open a new window which will show all the drives on the computer. Generally, the "C:" drive is the hard drive, so right-click on that and select "Properties" - this will show you the drive capacity as well as how much of the drive is in use.

Be sure to pay attention to the use of the left mouse button verses the right mouse button.

Mac

Click on the "Apple" at the top left corner of the screen. Now click on "About This Mac". This will bring up a window that contains the processor type and speed and how much memory the computer has. To find the storage capacity on the hard drive, click the "More Info..." button. Now click on "ATA" under "Hardware". There should be two "ATA Bus" sections. Click on the bottom section or the one that doesn't contain anything about a CD drive. The hard drive capacity is under "Capacity".

Linux

At the command prompt, type the following command:

cat /proc/cpuinfo 

This will tell you the processor speed as well as the memory capacity. For the storage capacity, type:

df

This will yield an output similar to this:

Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on

/dev/hda2             20315844   7085116  12182088  37% /

/dev/hda1               101086     11451     84416  12% /boot

/dev/hda5             16674136  12303988   3523124  78% /home

This output above indicates that the computer has a single hard drive with three partitions. The first of these is the root partition which has a total capacity of 20 Gigabytes, the second is 101 Megabytes, and the third is 16.7 Gigabytes.

What else can you think of that could make an influence on your speed and memory?

Please listen to the Video for the needed information for step 4 on worksheet.