Computer hardware is the collection of physical components that constitute a computer system. Computer hardware is the physical parts or components of a computer, such  as monitor, keyboard, computer data storage, hard disk drive (HDD), graphic card, sound card, memory (RAM), motherboard, and so on, all of which are tangible physical objects.^[1] By contrast, software is instructions that can be stored and run by hardware.

Hardware is directed by the software to execute any command or instruction. A combination of hardware and software forms a usable computing system.^[2]

Online Computer Learning

Welcome to Online Computer Learning

Contents:

1. Hardware
2. Software
3. Internet
4. Chatting
5. Tutorial on Photoshop
6. Tutorial on Microsoft Word 10
7. Tutorial on Microsoft Excel 10
8. Tutorial on Microsoft PowerPoint 10
9. Tutorial on Illustrator 1010.
10.Tutorial on Image Ready
11. Tutorial on CSS
12. Tutorial on HTML

13. Tutorial on Online Earning

14. Tutorial on Google Adsene
15. Tutorial on Visual Basic
16. Tutorial on C+

Some useful site for Online Computer Learning.

These are 20 of the best free online learning sites I have come across on the net. The listing is in no particular order.

Findtutorials.com 

One of the best tutorial / learning resources I have come across. FindTutorials.com is a Web index and search engine that searches for tutorials and online courses on the web. It Features a huge categorized database (700 categories, about 4000 tutorials) FindTutorials.com allows you to search for free tutorials on practically any subject, ranging from photography to gardening to psychology. The site claims to guide you directly to written, certified tutorials carefully selected from all over the Web.

Beginners.co.uk 

Beginners.co.uk provides a mixture of free and paid services. As the name suggests, a lot of the tutorials are focussed on newcomers in the IT field. The site features more than 300 free online tutorials on various topics like HTML, JAVA, .NET, Javascript, Flash, PHP, SQL, C++, C#, VB, ASP and many more categories. The site also features links to various other free tech tutorials sites. The paid section of the site includes more than 250 online training courses for an annual membership fee.

Devcentral 

This site is for hard-core techies and IT professionals. The recently revamped site contains a number of free articles, tutorials and downloads. Much of the stuff here is in PDF format. So you will need Adobe's Acrobat Reader to view it. Some of the sections of the site need you to register (registration is free). Some of the categories covered in the site include C, C++,C# Win32, Java, VB, DCOM, Networking, Perl, XML,etc.

Ehow.com 

Ehow is meant to help people to do a variety of real-world activities. It claims to be the most comprehensive source of information on how to do things, offering thousands of specific project instructions. With 14 categories featuring 120 subcategories, eHow offers staff-written, reviewed and edited solutions. Sample a few categories: Automotive, Careers/Education, Computers, Relationships, Dating, (Yes, that's right! A tutorial on dating!) marriage, Finance/Business, Health, Hobbies/Games ,Crafts, Fashion, Pets, Travel and more

Lifelonglearning 

This is an award winning website in its category. A number of study guides in information technology are featured for free online viewing. The site claims that over 10 million people have accessed these guides in the past 5 years and over 350 leading universities and colleges around the world have used these guides. Hmmnn... tall claims...Find out for yourself if the site lives up to them.

Techtutorials.com 

As the name suggests, another site for tech geeks. Its yet another directory of free computer tutorials and whitepapers. The directory currently contains around 1700 free tutorials on subjects like computer hardware, databases, networking, UNIX, Linux, Programming, etc. This site comes from the makers of mcmcse.com which features resources to help people preparing for Microsoft's MCSE examination.

Wannalearn.com 

Gives a directory listing of free tutorials available on various topics (tech as well as non-tech related). Yeah, so what's new? Well..., this one only brings you content that is entirely free, and does not require any form of user registration. It features sites with predominantly or exclusively original content. Definitely worth a look.

Worldwidelearn.com 
Provides e-learning opportunities for a variety of careers. It acts as a gateway to courses, tutorials, classes, degrees and workshops from around the world that are offered entirely online and available to adult learners worldwide. Not all are free though.) 

This site offers online courses in as many as 40 varied subject topics from copy writing, e-commerce, accounting to Linux training, personal development, photography and more. The site also offers online MBA programs, degree programs and college courses.

Howstuffworks.com 

HowStuffWorks.com is an amazing, award-winning online destination for anyone who wants to know how anything works. If you have an inquisitive mind and are always looking for answers on how anything works the way it does, then this is the site for you. Categories include Computers & Internet, Engines & Automotive, Electronics & Telecom, Science & Technology, Aviation & Transport, Body & Health, Living & Entertainment, Around the House, Machines,etc. Aimless clicking around the site brought me to a page on how Lockpicking works! Well, I guess that could come in use someday...

Free-ed.net 

Free-Ed is all about free education on the Internet. It's a simple as that--no tuition payments and no hidden charges. They have assembled links to the best course notes, outlines, tutorials, courses and e-texts on the net. Free-Ed provides an online, virtual university where users from around the world can study, take courses, and participate in community activities at no cost. Complete courses and tutorials are available for more than 120 different vocational and academic disciplines. The course catalog here is divided into the General course catalog and the Information Technology (IT) course catalog. You don't even have to sign up or register for a Free-Ed course.

Intelinfo.com 

You can easily spend hours exploring Intelinfo, which claims to be One of the very best Computer Education and Training Gateways on the Web Today. Whether you're going for technical certification or teaching yourself programming, web design, or networking, here you will find plenty of web resources. Get Free Knowledge, Information, References, and Resources about computers by visiting the many Free Computer, Programming and IT Training Courses, Tutorials, Books, Training Guides, Tips, Articles, and How-Tos. If you're a student learning computer programming or an IT professional, this site is for you. If you do visit the site, I recommend you subscribe to their monthly newsletter, which gives a lot of info on new free computer training and education sites which they find and make available on the website. Its real quality stuff.

Learn2.com 

Offers e-learning solutions for individuals as well as corporates. The site offers free as well as subscription based courses that you can have streamed onto your computer for use at your own convenience.. The courses offered include Office 2000, certification courses for Linux and Microsoft certified courses. Nothing great about this site except that it offers a few free tutorials.

TheTutorial.com 

Yet another tech related site featuring free tutorials on C, PHP, Delphi, Flash, DHTML, Javascript, Pascal, Perl. It also offers animations and cliparts if you are planning to build your own site. There is also a tips and tricks section on Javacript and HTML.

FindTutorials.com 

This Australian site provides hundreds of tutorials on a wide variety of topics. The site showcases a mixture of IT-related and general tutorials. From Accounting, American football, Chemistry, Dental Health and the like to Dreamveaver, ASP, .NET, CGI, this site claims to have it all. Registration is free and members can even request a tutorial any topic if they don't find it on the site.

Webmonkey 

This site comes from the stable of the well-known search engine Lycos. Webmonkey is a boon for web developers. Whether you are just starting out to build your own site or are a professional webmaster, you just cannot give this site a miss. With hundreds of articles across categories like Web Authoring, Design, Multimedia, E-business, Programming, etc, Webmonkey makes other sites in this category look like chiken shit, oops!, I mean monkey poop. Bottom line- Even if you are only remotely interested in IT or the internet, you won't be disappointed if you visit this site.

Autodidact 

Autodidact is a free laering portal. It offers a category-wise listing of the best of the Web for e-learning courses and studies in education, employee training, development, performance improvement and fun. Autodidact brings you resources in online education, email training, Web Based Training, online learning, teleclass training, chat room training, and more. Last I checked, they had more than 4000 free tutorials. I even tried to access a couple of courses on Astronomy from the listing on its main page, but was greeted with a 'Page not found' message. Maybe you'll have better luck.

Learnfree.com 

This site is unique in the sense that it offers free video-enhanced instructions on various topics ranging from pets to parenting, golf to gardening, health and medicine to beauty and fashion. They have a catalog of more than 250 instructional and educational websites on most of the topics under the sun and each contains several to dozens of pages of text and pictures - to which are added streaming video clips. If you have a broadband internet connection, you may enjoy the site better. My 56kbps modem just choked with one video clip.

Online Sapiens 

This link takes you to a page quite similar to the present page. The site offers a listing of many free online courses available on the net. You can even subscribe to their Online Courses newsletter which features other free online education sites and other sources of university, college and continuing education courses.

Goodwill Global Learning 

GCF Global Learning is administered by Goodwill Industries, a not-for-profit organization. They provide free, web-based career and computer training for beginning computer users. The curriculum is web accessible and features basic language, screen-shots, and interactive exercises. When you become a member of the GCF Global Learning community (membership is free), you can take free self-paced classes or free instructor-led classes. Current classes include How to be a Distance Learner, Introduction to the Internet, Introduction to Computers, Introduction to Microsoft Office, Introduction to Windows, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Access, and Applied Skills (Career Development). 

The Creativity Portal

The Creativity Portal helps you to explore various activities related to arts, crafts, music, and writing. The CP is a specialty directory of sites that have free instructional information (tips, tutorials, articles, projects, how-to's, etc) to help you learn about the topic that interests you the most. If you have the desire to learn photography, writing, fine arts, graphic design, music making, origami, balloon twisting, and a whole lot of other things, then this is the place for you to begin your learning adventure. I was particularly impressed by the section on music featuring lessons on guitar, flutes. drums, banjo,etc. 

Hardware

Computer hardware is the collection of physical elements that constitute a computer system. Computer hardware refers to the physical parts or components of a computer such as monitor, keyboard, Computer data storage, hard drive disk, mouse, CPU (graphic cards, sound cards, memory, motherboard and chips), etc. all of which are physical objects that you can actually touch. In contrast, software is untouchable. Software exists as ideas, application, concepts, and symbols, but it has no substance. A combination of hardware and software forms a usable computing system.

Hardware Photo

History of computing hardware

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

History of computing
Hardware
Hardware before 1960 Hardware 1960s to present Hardware in Soviet Bloc countries
Computer science
Artificial intelligence   Compiler construction Computer science   Operating systems Programming languages   Software engineering
Modern concepts
Graphical user interface   Internet Personal computers   Laptops   Video games World Wide Web
Timeline of computing
2400 BC–1949   1950–1979   1980–1989 1990–1999   2000–2009   2010–2019 more timelines ...
Category Videos on Hardware Hardware introdution
v   t   e

Computing hardware evolved from machines that needed separate manual action to perform each arithmetic operation, to punched card machines, and then to stored-program computers. The history of stored-program computers relates first to computer architecture, that is, the organization of the units to perform input and output, to store data and to operate as an integrated mechanism.

The Z3 by inventor Konrad Zuse from 1941 is regarded as the first working programmable, fully automatic modern computing machine. Thus, Zuse is often regarded as the inventor of the computer.^[1][2][3][4]

Before the development of the general-purpose computer, most calculations were done by humans. Mechanical tools to help humans with digital calculations were then called "calculating machines", by proprietary names, or even as they are now, calculators. It was those humans who used the machines who were then called computers. Aside from written numerals, the first aids to computation were purely mechanical devices which required the operator to set up the initial values of an elementary arithmetic operation, then manipulate the device to obtain the result. A sophisticated (and comparatively recent) example is the slide rule in which numbers are represented as lengths on a logarithmic scale and computation is performed by setting a cursor and aligning sliding scales, thus adding those lengths. Numbers could be represented in a continuous "analog" form, for instance a voltage or some other physical property was set to be proportional to the number. Analog computers, like those designed and built by Vannevar Bush before World War II were of this type. Numbers could be represented in the form of digits, automatically manipulated by a mechanical mechanism. Although this last approach required more complex mechanisms in many cases, it made for greater precision of results.

In the United States, the development of the computer was underpinned by massive government investment in the technology for military applications during WWII and then the Cold War. The latter superpower confrontation made it possible for local manufacturers to transform their machines into commercially viable products.^[5] It was the same story in Europe, where adoption of computers began largely through proactive steps taken by national governments to stimulate development and deployment of the technology.^[6]

The invention of electronic amplifiers made calculating machines much faster than their mechanical or electromechanical predecessors. Vacuum tube (thermionic valve) amplifiers gave way to solid state transistors, and then rapidly to integrated circuits which continue to improve, placing millions of electrical switches (typically transistors) on a single elaborately manufactured piece of semi-conductor the size of a fingernail. By defeating the tyranny of numbers, integrated circuits made high-speed and low-cost digital computers a widespread commodity. There is an ongoing effort to make computer hardware faster, cheaper, and capable of storing more data. Computing hardware has become a platform for uses other than mere computation, such as process automation, electronic communications, equipment control, entertainment, education, etc. Each field in turn has imposed its own requirements on the hardware, which has evolved in response to those requirements, such as the role of the touch screen to create a more intuitive and natural user interface. As all computers rely on digital storage, and tend to be limited by the size and speed of memory, the history of computer data storage is tied to the development of computers.

CPU board

Networking hardware

Networking hardware chart

Networking hardware

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Networking hardware may also be known as network equipment, computer networking devices. Units which are the last receiver or generate data are called hosts or data terminal equipment.^{[citation needed]}.

All these terms refer to devices facilitating the use of a computer network. Specifically, they mediate data in a computer network.^[1]

Gateway: this device is placed at a network node and interfaces with another network that uses different protocols. It works on OSI layers 4 to 7. Specific devices[edit]

• Router: a specialized network device that determines the next network point to which it can forward a data packet towards the ultimate destination of the packet. Unlike a gateway, it cannot interface different protocols. It works on OSI layer 3.
• Switch: a device that allocates traffic from one network segment to certain lines (intended destination(s)) which connect the segment to another network segment. Unlike a hub, a switch splits the network traffic and sends it to different destinations rather than to all systems on the network. It works on OSI layer 2.
• Bridge: a device that connects multiple network segments along the data link layer. It works on OSI layer 2.
• Hub: a device that connects multiple Ethernet segments, making them act as a single segment. When using a hub, every attached device shares the same broadcast domain and the same collision domain. Therefore, only one computer connected to the hub is able to transmit at a time. Depending on the network topology, the hub provides a basic level 1 OSI model connection among the network objects (workstations, servers, etc.). It provides bandwidth which is shared among all the objects, in contrast to switches, which provide a connection between individual nodes. It works on OSI layer 1.
• Repeater: a device which amplifies or regenerates digital signals received while sending them from one part of a network into another. It works on OSI layer 1.

Some hybrid network devices:

• Multilayer switch: a switch which, in addition to switching on OSI layer 2, provides functionality at higher protocol layers.
• Protocol converter: a hardware device that converts between two different types of transmission, such as asynchronous and synchronous transmissions.
• Bridge router (brouter): a device that combines router and bridge functionality and therefore works on OSI layers 2 and 3.

Networking hardware chart

Hardware or software components that typically sit on the connection point of different networks, e.g. between an internal network and an external network:

• Proxy server: computer network service which allows clients to make indirect network connections to other network services.
• Firewall: a piece of hardware or software put on the network to prevent some communications forbidden by the network policy.
• Network address translator (NAT): network service provided as hardware or software that converts internal to external network addresses and vice versa.

Other hardware for establishing networks or dial-up connections:

• Multiplexer: a device that combines several electrical signals into a single signal.
• Network interface controller: a piece of computer hardware allowing the attached computer to communicate by network.
• Wireless network interface controller: a piece of computer hardware allowing the attached computer to communicate by LAN.
• Modem: Device that modulates an analog "carrier" signal (such as sound) to encode digital information, and that also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information, such as a computer communicating with another computer over a telephone network.
• ISDN terminal adapter (TA): a specialized gateway for ISDN.
• Line driver: a device to increase transmission distance by amplifying the signal; used in base-band networks only.

Networking hardware chart