Computers: Then And Now
Samuel L. Freeman
Global High School
Abstract
In this paper I am describing what normal computers are like, as in speed and design, and what the modern supercomputers are like. I will be describing how the prices are different and why they are different. If you are reading this mr. mills, which I hope your not, then I am going to end this page right here.
Computers: Then And Now
The first computer I have owned myself is an acer aspire one. I bought this computer last December. This computer was $300 plus tax, and had no cd/dvd drive. It has 160 gigabytes of hard drive memory, and 1 gigabyte of RAM memory. It has a Intel Atom N450 / 1.66 GHz. I have had this computer for 10 months and it still works great. Some pros and cons would be. Pros: Small and lightweight (weighs 3 pounds), Connects to internet very well, the original battery life is very high (8 hours). Cons: After 10 months the battery will only charge to 42%, Sometimes when you sleep the computer you have to turn it off then turn it back on and, It is really slow when you have more than 3 windows open, also because of the operating system, windows 7 starter, you cant change your background, which no one likes. Overall I would recommend this computer to anyone who just needed a computer to check their email and check their facebook, myspace, or twitter every once and a while. But not to anyone who needed it for buisness or wanted it to last a long time. It is cheep, now only $263. But if you wanted to take the time to save up for a more exspensive computer it would be more worth it. I would recommend buying a normal laptop for around 500-700 dollars. Now I will be talking about the worlds fastest computer. The world’s fastest computer as of october 2010 is the Tianhe-I. This computer is located at The National Supercomputing Center, Tianjin, People's Republic of China. This computer has 96 terrabytes, which is 96 trillion bytes, equal to 98,304 gigabytes. Most normal computes today have around 200-300 gigabytes. This computer is extemely fast, it does 2½ quadrillion floating point operations per second. That’s 2, 500, 000, 000, 000, 000! These computers have a huge difference! They are a lot different.
References
Lamagna, E. A. (1980). Fast computer algebra . Kingston, R.I.: University of Rhode Island, Dept. of Computer Science and Experimental Statistics.
Lloyd, S. (2006). Programming the universe: a quantum computer scientist takes on the cosmos. New York: Knopf.
Otfinoski, S. (2008). Computers . New York: Marshall Cavendish Benchmark.
Schneck, P. B. (1987). Supercomputer architecture . Boston: Kluwer Academic .
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