Computers Introduction

The world wide web is full of information about computers, software, debugging, workarounds, etc. It seems to me that much of it is full of jargon and terms that scare a beginner away from learning more. Most computer manuals also seem to make these assumptions. Even worse, much of the information is organized in such a way that unless you know what you need to know, you don't know the question to ask to find what you need to know. Yes, that was a convoluted sentence. It has to be to explain a convoluted problem.

It is my goal in these pages to present enough information about the basic operation of computers so you will be able to continue on and understand the other documentation. While computers are complicated devices, the principles are not all that complicated. My attempt is to present this in terms of simple things we do in our daily lives. I am trying to present this as a series of problems that must be overcome as computers become more and more complicated.

Because I have chosen to present this in a relatively simple terms, I am constantly in internal conflict about over-simplifying verses doing my normal "nerd" talk of wanting to explain all of the boring details. The web and HTML is a godsend in that respect. It allows me to write a page in simple terms and link it to another page that has the detail really needed. I hope this allows me to meet both goals.

Another conflict while writing this is the hardware vs. software point of view. It seems to me that both are necessary to make a computer operate, so this attempts to look at both perspectives. However, I again must state, it is not intended to address specifics, but only general principles.

Part of my goals are to make these pages available to everyone who wants to learn. That has also created the curse of HTML. Different browsers seem to display these pages different ways. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a combination that seems to work on all browsers, but I will get there. The goal is

To follow the W3C standards for HTML & CSS.
To display on well on the open source GUI browsers. (Mozilla and Epiphany)
To be readable on the text only browsers(lynx)
To be printable without the right 1/2 of text being "cut off".
To be accessible to the vision impaired.
To display well on the most used browser (ie).

So far the last one seems to be the most elusive. But I shall prevail!!