What is a Computer

Nora's Definition

Think of a Computer as a Coffee Pot
A coffee pot processes coffee:
You input coffee grounds and water, the coffee pot processes what you put in, and then the coffee pot outputs coffee. A coffee pot cannot drill a hole or sharpen a pencil because it was not designed (programmed) for those jobs.

Input	Input	Processing	Input	Output
+ Water

The trick to learning how to use a computer is to learn how to get the Input right; so the computer can get the Output right! Remember: you are smart; the computer is dumb. You have to speak to the computer very carefully because it just doesn't get it!

Input	Input	Processing	Input	Output
Data		Magic inside Computer		Information

A computer is hardware and run by software

How to tell the difference between software and hardware. If you can throw it at someone, it's hardware. Someone may hand you a disk and call it software or a program (same thing), but actually the software is the information written on the disk, not the disk itself. Software is just a set of instructions for the computer to follow, also called a program. However, many computer programs have millions of lines of instructions and are written by whole teams of programmers over a period of years..

However, without software, your computer pieces are an ugly thing to hold your desk down because all that hardware can't do anything without instructions (software). A computer is a programmable machine - it can't do anything without the program. Most computers have some basic types of hardware and software.

Other Definitions

Webopedia
"A programmable machine. The two principal characteristics of a computer are:

It responds to a specific set of instructions in a well-defined manner.

• It can execute a prerecorded list of instructions (a program).

Modern computers are electronic and digital. The actual machinery -- wires, transistors, and circuits -- is called hardware; the instructions and data are called software. "