Consult the report available under Windows in the Control Panel.- Click Start➪Settings➪Control Panel.
- Double-click the System icon.
- Under Windows XP, go to the General tab. There you see informa-
tion that includes the operating system version, the registered
owner, OS registration number, microprocessor type and speed,
and the total amount of installed RAM. Under older versions of
Windows (including 98SE, 98, and 95) go to either the General or
the Performance tab to obtain the same information.
Go to the System Information report.The report is part of Windows 98
and later, including Windows XP.- Go to Programs➪Accessories➪System Tools and select System
Information. You find a similar screen available as part of the
Microsoft Office applications Help screen. - Open one of the programs such as Microsoft Word or Microsoft
Excel. - Click the Help menu.
- Click About Microsoft Word➪System Info.
Use the facilities of a system-optimizing or diagnostic program.Norton
SystemWorks or Norton Utilities are examples. The manufacturer of your
laptop may provide a diagnostic program as part of the basic suite of
software installed on the machine.
Chapter 6: Brain Matters: Memory, Microprocessors, and BIOS 87
Zeros and ones, ones and zeros
Like it or not, in the world of personal computing
some of the rules of math do not apply. Where
else can 64K mean 64,000 or 65,536 or some-
where else in that neighborhood? It all comes
down to whether the counting is being done in
decimal, binary, or marketing numbers. The
decimal system is the one you use when you
buy apples at Super Shop and Nosh. Ten Red
Delicious at $1.25 apiece cost $12.50, with no ifs,
ands, or buts. In the decimal world, 1,000 is the
number that comes after 999.
But computers live in a binary world where
counting is based on powers of 2. Data —
whether it is a letter of the alphabet in Word, a
number in Excel, or part of a picture in a graph-
ics program — is represented as a stream of
computer words made up of just 0s and 1s. For
example, the word 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 in binary is
equivalent to the decimal value 170. (You read
from right to left: no 1s, one 2, no 4s, one 8, no
16s, one 32, no 64s, and one 128.)Individual binary digitsare called bits.When
they are brought together in an 8-bit computer
word they constitute a byte.Although it is pos-
sible to come to a nice, even 1,000 in binary
math (1111101000), technical types seem to
prefer the simplicity of 10000000000, which con-
verts to 1,024 in the decimal world. And so,(continued)