[Music] hi there Learners and Welcome to our next module module 1.2 where we are now looking specifically at software remember in the first one we looked at the PC now we are going to look at software we're going to look at Hardware later on Etc so let's look at some of the things that we're going to be touching on in this one we're specifically going to be looking at the difference really between application software and system software now why am I saying that because when we look at the computer we already said in the previous
module that it's divided into two parts namely your Hardware that which you can touch and see the the the physical parts of the computer and the software but the software even though it is you know a group of programs that perform specific tasks for the user there are different types of software and and this is why we are delving into this today because we are going to look at the difference between system software and application software now you can see application software is fairly fairly simple because we're talking about an app so that means it's
a program the minute you see software we're talking about a program that performs a particular task this software or this program however doesn't just do one task this particular program manages the entire computer system and this is broken into three categories namely your operating system your drivers and your utilities so don't forget that as we go through now like I mentioned to you our application software we're talking about a group of group of programs that perform specific tasks for us as the users um we need only think of things like our word processing programs like
Microsoft Word typing tutor software gaming software if you buy a particular game let's say you go and download Forza Horizon 7 um are you going to be playing Apex with that piece of software no it performs the specific task of allowing you to play Forza Horizon 7 if I download Microsoft Word can I do pres uh PowerPoint presentations in it no I can't okay so please remember that application software or your apps what exep for example any of these it's programs that perform specific tasks for the user system software is different in that it is
a program or programs that's intended to control support or operate the computer and like I said this is divided into your operating system your utility software and then your drivers as well so let's take a deeper dive into our system software now remember this Prov provides an interface between the user and the computer so the way we interact with the computer the the very fact that I'm able to do these presentations I can click on little icons I can uh go to my desktop all of those things I'm interacting with a computer in a graphical
way this is why we talk about the graphical user interface this means that software works with Windows menus and icons and hence most system software includes this graphical user interface so questions around this could be what is system software and what is meant by a GUI and a GUI and please when you are asked what is meant by it and what the acronym stands for those are two different things this is the acronym guei stands for graphical user interface what does it mean it means that we are referring to software that allows me to interact
with the computer computer in a graphical way simple as that now the software which controls all the activities that takes place inside the computer this is known as your operating system please this applies to um whatever device you are using whether you using a um Windows device whether you're using a apple an Apple device um cell phone tablet any of those things they all come preloaded with OP operating systems okay and these are the various types of operating systems so when they mention that you are maybe going to be buying an Android phone they're talking
about the operating system you might have a Samsung phone but the Samsung phone has the Android software as its operating system the Apple device your iPhone has the iOS software running as its operating system now again what does this operating system do it manages all the hardware and all the other software on the computer so the fact that you have apps on your phone the fact that you have different um programs and games on your PC that is the operating system managing the physical components and the other programs as well it maintains the security so
the fact that you can log into a PC the fact that you can put in a username and password all of those things to gain access to your cell phones tablets any other Computing devices that's the operating system doing that and it provides you the user interface with your desktop your icons your folders all of those things that's the operating system and that's why it's so important in fact it is the most important software in your computer because all other hardware and software depends on it and is controlled by it okay this is why whenever
you going and buy a laptop desktop um tablet cell phone it's already pre-loaded or pre-installed with an operating system okay I always use the example to say you can have a phone without WhatsApp but you can't have WhatsApp without a phone right because we need that operating system now here's a few examples of what the graphical user interface allows us to do and for many of you you you are used to seeing this but this is not how Compu computers used to operate it used to be black and white screens there were no pictures there
were no dialogue boxes like this there were no um you know menus text boxes Spinners radio buttons command buttons all of these things this was not the norm and when this came into effect um this is why the the the graphical user interface is so important because our operating system allows us and guys you know that this is much easier to work with than if you had to type out commands and instructions every single time okay so that is our operating system now we have our utilities now here are two examples of your utilities you've
got a sniping tool you've got a calculator but what what are these programs what is a utility in terms of our system software well utility programs are the housekeeping programs of the system software I must add this they are builtin programs into the operating system so for example Windows Windows has these utilities built into it it's not something you need to install afterwards okay so that's the first thing utilities are programs that are built into the operating system they are the housekeeping programs of the system software they optimize the performance of your computer and ensure
that it's running smoothly for example you have other utilities like the disc cleanup which is allows the user to select you know to remove all unwanted or unneeded files you've got your scan dis you've got the fact that you can uninstall and you've got backups as well okay so these are all examples of your utility software then they give us a few more examples of application software this one is very important because when we talk about the Microsoft Office suweet we're talking about a group of programs that are installed as one program but they are
individual programs inside of that one program in other words I buy this piece of software as a suite instead of buying each one of these individually so I buy it as one collection I install it as one but my PC um recognizes each one of those pieces of The Suite as individual programs there are other types of um application software as well like a communication software desktop publishing games web authoring web browsers plugins and other Financial applications Okay so we've looked now at our system software we've looked at the operating system we've looked at the
utility software we've seen examples of our application software and the last one in this is our driver software so when we talk about drivers we're not talking about the guys who are who are driving Vehicles no we're talking about a piece of software that is able to identify new hardware devices when you plug them into your PC and interact with them seamlessly in other words you don't need a whole complicated process in order to use a printer you can plug it in you install the driver software and the hardware can now work with your computer
in many cases the operating system already has bolt-in drivers for many devices on the market okay so doesn't always have everything but they do have a lot of the basic drivers then a beautiful feature of Windows is something called plug and play again this is something we take for granted today but in many computers especially going back 20 30 years this was not the norm you would plug in a piece of Hardware whether it's a flash drive whether it's a printer you went through a whole complicated process in order to have it work what do
we do today this plugin play feature allows us for example to take a flash drive and to plug it in to our PC and use it so what does this feature do it's a feature of the operating system that automatically detects a new device have you seen when you plug in a flash drive those um notification boxes pop up right so Plug and Play detects that it then loads the relevant driver what did we say a driver is software that identifies new hardware and allows us to work with it and then allocates Computer Resources right
so that is what this feature does you need to know this definition it is very very important okay once Plug and Play is done what it needs to do the device is now ready to be used we also have another term that comes up the last two terms that we're dealing with the first being hot swappable now this simply means that we can use anything external we can plug it into the PC without having to switch it off in the past and this is why you need understand that's why I I love history because we
need to understand the past to appreciate where we are now in the past when you needed to add anything to your computer you had to switch it off plug in the piece of Hardware switch it on and then give instructions as to how to use it now Plug and Play has already allowed us to be able to do this however being that items and Hardware are not hot swappable like your flash drive dri it means that I can simply take it and plug it in right in the past again you had to switch off then
plug it in then switch it back on okay so please remember those terms then I think the last one is our firewall now the firewall is a program which means it's software and it works like a bouncer at the door of an exclusive club like that bouncer only those people who are on the invited list will be allowed into the Club um you're not getting through unless your name is there okay a firewall will only allow those websites designated to be safe to access your computer so when you go to a particular site and it
needs to access something from your PC or something from you the firewall is there as the first line of defense it is an added or it has an added feature in that it will also block many outgoing traffic or any outgoing traffic to unauthorized sites as well so your firewall software can be customized to say well look um the person who's using the PC is not allowed to go to these sites and these sites are not allowed to communicate with the PC and so it can act as um a blocking mechanism there as well but
it's a lovely piece of software that just ensures that you can browse the internet safely and folks that's it for module 1.2 where we've now looked at the difference between application software and system software we've looked at the operating system its functions and examples and we've also looked at the windows environment as well
