A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or technician. Unlike large, costly minicomputers and mainframes, time-sharing by many people at the same time is not used with personal computers. Primarily in the late 1970s and 1980s, the term home computer was also used. The advent of personal computers and the concurrent Digital Revolution have significantly affected the lives of people in all countries.
Institutional or corporate computer owners in the 1960s had to write their own programs to do any useful work with the machines. While personal computer users may develop their own applications, usually these systems run commercial software, free-of-charge software ("freeware"), which is most often proprietary, or free and open-source software, which is provided in "ready-to-run", or binary form. Software for personal computers is typically developed and distributed independently from the hardware or operating system manufacturers. Many personal computer users no longer need to write their own programs to make any use of a personal computer, although end-user programming is still feasible. This contrasts with mobile systems, where software is often available only through a manufacturer-supported channel, and end-user program development may be discouraged by lack of support by the manufacturer.
Since the early 1990s, Microsoft operating systems (first with MS-DOS and then with Windows) and Intel hardware - collectively called 'Wintel' - have dominated the personal computer industry, and today the term "PC" normally refers to the ubiquitous Wintel platform. Alternatives to Windows occupy a minority share of the industry; these include the Mac platform from Apple (running the macOS operating system), and free and open-source, Unix-like operating systems, such as Linux. Other notable platforms until the 1990s were the Amiga from Commodore, and the PC-98 from NEC.
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
The Communication A module of the course on Global Issues tackles challenges
related to instantaneous communication and social media. The interdisciplinary
approach implemented integrates SHS and engi
Learn the basics of cement chemistry and laboratory best practices for assessment of its key properties.
Related people (5)
Related concepts (437)
Related courses (46)
Mettre en pratique les bases de la programmation vues au semestre précédent. Développer un logiciel structuré. Méthode de debug d'un logiciel. Introduction à la programmation scientifique. Introductio
Discrete mathematics is a discipline with applications to almost all areas of study. It provides a set of indispensable tools to computer science in particular. This course reviews (familiar) topics a
The learning outcome is to increase the knowledge of simulation methods and the role of computers in the management and the operation of electric power systems.
A media server is a computer appliance or an application software that stores digital media (video, audio or images) and makes it available over a network. Media servers range from servers that provide video on demand to smaller personal computers or NAS (Network Attached Storage) for the home. By definition, a media server is a device that simply stores and shares media. This definition is vague, and can allow several different devices to be called media servers.
A front panel was used on early electronic computers to display and allow the alteration of the state of the machine's internal registers and memory. The front panel usually consisted of arrays of indicator lamps, digit and symbol displays, toggle switches, dials, and push buttons mounted on a sheet metal face plate. In early machines, CRTs might also be present (as an oscilloscope, or, for example, to mirror the contents of Williams–Kilburn tube memory).
A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PCB). Microcomputers became popular in the 1970s and 1980s with the advent of increasingly powerful microprocessors. The predecessors to these computers, mainframes and minicomputers, were comparatively much larger and more expensive (though indeed present-day mainframes such as the IBM System z machines use one or more custom microprocessors as their CPUs).
Personalizing behavior change (BC) strategies to motivate increased physical activity is especially important for the diverse older adult population. However, there is a lack of knowledge about how to
Federated Learning is explicitly designed for learning a global model from distributed, possibly sensitive non-i.i.d. data at different clients. In reality, this scenario is not always legible since i
Evolutionary algorithms are increasingly being applied to problems that are too computationally expensive to run on a single personal computer due to costly fitness function evaluations and/or large n