Research and Present a n os to Choose

You are an IT manager facing the problem of buying some licensed OS onto your office computers (they are about 10). Go to www.wikipedia.org or Google to make a short overview of existing operating systems. You are to present the results of your research to your team and the boss who will take a decision basing upon your information.

Your reports should include: the names of OSes, types of computers and programs they are compatible with, features, prices, possible drawbacks, popularity rank and other factors you find important.

Prepare a report in the form of a Power Point Presentation with tables and graphs to explicitly demonstrate your results. Write a speech to follow the presentation.

Present the report in class, draw a conclusion on which OS you would recommend to purchase and why. Let your group mates discuss your conclusions. Offer your own conclusions: they should sound persuading!

In class listen to 3-4 presenters.

D iscuss the choices and decide upon an OS.

Points to consider before and while decision making :

1. your company needs (types of computers you have, their functions, everyday routine operations, major programs crucial for your company’s functioning, etc.)

2. personnel specific needs (ages and sexes, social status, user levels, working hours, etc)

3. your company budget (moneysaving policies, company status, prestige issues, etc.)

5. Hardware Warm up

What are these things in the pictures? Are they familiar to you? Name them!

What are their functions?

<key words>

chip	RAM	LAN
WAN	Memory	hard drive
cables	ports	Pentium
SCSI	sound card	video-card
cables	MB	GB
processor	driver

Watch and Speak

R ecord 5a

Computer Hardware in Plain English

The movie introduces the important three parts of computer hardware: hard drive, RAM, processor.

Watch the movie and speak on the following:

• What metaphor is used to illustrate the role of each hardware part.

• The three common parts of all computers

• Role of hardware to store information

• Role of RAM to make some information easy to access

• Role of the processor to keep them system working

Listen to the movie and fill in the gaps:

….

Instead of boxes and bicycles, we need a place to store things like photos, music, documents, and ________. In a computer, it’s not the basement, but a _____ _____. A computer’s hard drive is where you keep all the things you want to use later. And like basements, the _________the hard drive, the more you can _________.

….

Some of the information stored on computers is hard for the computer to ________ quickly because it needs to take the ________ ________. To solve this problem computers use RAM or ____ Access ________. It makes information easier for the computer to __________. This means RAM makes computers ___________.

….

Something has to make sure all the parts run __________. In computers, this is called the ____________. It’s a __________part that’s like the butler of the computer. It sends and receives information, _________ ___________ and puts the software to work. And the faster it can complete tasks, the faster your computer will be.

….

The ______ ________ is like a basement. It stores all the things you need for later. ________ is like a closet on the main floor. It makes some information quick and easy to access. And the __________ is like having a butler around always completing tasks and making things work together.