| An operating system is a software program. If you have a microcomputer, commonly referred to as a PC, that conforms to the standards developed by IBM and uses a microprocessor in the Intel family, you are probably using a version of the Windows operating system. In fact, these computers are sometimes called Wintel machines because they use the Intel processor and run the Windows operating system.
You need to load the Windows operating system (the OS) into memory (RAM) before you can use other software programs. The OS is in charge of the hardware components of the computer—the monitor, the keyboard, the printer, etc. You, the user, communicate what you want the computer to do through the OS. These commands are issued by pointing and clicking when in the GUI (Graphical User Interface) or by keying in commands such as TYPE or CLS at the command line prompt. |
