What Does Hardware Mean in Computer Terms?

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Dave Andrews and today I'm going to tell you what hardware means in computer terms. When we are referring to computer hardware we are talking about the devices that make up the computers that we use. This is going to be your monitor your mouse, your keyboard, that's all computer hardware. Now I'm going to use my laptop as an example. There are several things within this laptop that would qualify as a computer hardware. The laptop itself would be a piece of hardware, but also would be each individual component that makes up this laptop. For instance this screen here. That's going to be a piece of computer hardware. The keyboard that's built into the base of the laptop is going to be computer hardware, this mouse pad that's on the front is computer hardware. The CD drive here is going to be hardware as well. Each of these are components of this computer. Now I'm not going to open up my laptop but inside of here, we are going to have a hard drive. Now that's a device that stores files on your computer, basically it's a magnetic little cylinder that will spin around and has read heads that will store and save and retrieve data. There's also going to be memory that's inside of your laptop. That's going to be a piece of computer hardware. That's what your computer uses while it's running, not necessarily to store long term data but just data that's operating on at that time. You know in the case of a laptop there's going to be a battery, that's computer hardware. And underneath this little case right here, it's what's called a motherboard. And that's going to include your processor, your video card, your sound card and those other pieces of computer hardware that make up the computer. My name is Dave Andrews and I've just explained to you what hardware means in computer terms."