Basic Computer Notions Software

Next A simple computer Instruction format Instruction format (cont'd) Machine instructions Machine instructions (cont'd) Machine instructions (cont'd) Machine instructions (cont'd) Machine instructions (cont'd) Machine-language Programming Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Machine-language Programming (cont'd) Sample data Using an ‘intelligent’ computer Using a not-so-intelligent computer Using an ‘English-like’ query system Using a highly interactive system Using a highly interactive system (cont'd) Using a highly interactive system (cont'd) Using a highly interactive system (cont'd) Using SQL (Structured Query Language) Using a report-generation language Using a general-purpose high-level programming language Using assembler language Compilers and interpreters Compilers and interpreters (cont'd) Types of software Operating systems Operating systems are very complex 48 of 50 Consequences Consequences (cont'd)

Operating systems need to be very robust

Windows 95 & 98 were very ‘fragile’.
Reliability increased progressively in Windows NT, 2000 and XP.

A Microsoft-funded study (2000 Feb) found mean times to unplanned reboots of 5, 23 and 72 weeks for Windows 98, NT and 2000, respectively. Most or all of the machines were actually rebooted every day.

Another Microsoft-funded study (2001 Oct) found a mean time to OS crash of 13 days for Windows 98SE. The apparent goal of the study was to show how much better Windows 2000 and XP were than Windows 98.

ZDNet measured mean times between reboots of

(Ref. TCP (The Computer Paper, Canada), 2000 Apr, Exploring Windows 2000).

A Unix system will typically go weeks or months between reboots.

An operating system should not crash because of problems with application software.

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Last modified: Thu, 2007 Mar 15 08:35:42

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