In The Beginning there was the Abacus

In The Beginning there was the Abacus

In the beginning there was the abacus and then the mainframe computer it was a huge computer that processed and stored data on magnetic drums, punch cards and then tape. 

Then there was the personal computer, really though the personal computer did not last long quickly to be replaced with a laptop then handheld devices. 

And now we have the smartphone and tablet pc.

Now let's welcome you to cloud computing. But is this really new or have we seen it before?

What’s next? Yes, we will soon speak into the air listen for the reply, learn it, buy it, teach it, record it, play it, watch it, listen to it, and read it.

Until then though!

No matter what they call it no matter how they package it, it is still an abacus.

What we do is take information or data turn it into a digital code and then store it so it can be recalled, changed, manipulated, and stored again.

So let's briefly cover storage.

In your electronic devices there are megabytes, gigabytes of data. Did you know that you have access to terabytes of data (cloud computing).

What is a megabyte? 1 million 

What is a gigabyte? 1 billion

What is a terabyte? 1 trillion

What does that mean to you? It is the amount of data your device can store. 

Note: The terms can also be used to describe speed.

What is data? Data (not to be confused with the character on star trek), use to be facts, statistics, charts, details found on a chart or in a huge manual.

Now data is your emails, songs, movies, books, documents, pictures, and facts, statistics, charts, details found on a chart or manual. And all of this data can now be accessed from the palm of your hand.

Let’s consider just 16 gigabyte of storage and how much data you can store on an electronic device.

Of course each example must give consideration to the individual size of each item.

You could store 50,000 to 55,000 books, try putting that in you book bag.

Up to 4,000 songs, do you have a cd case that can carry all those albums.

Depending on the length of the movie, the quality of the movie, and the format, approximately 16 to 60 hours of moving pictures, how many movie reels would you need to store that many movies.

You could carry just about all of your photo albums on your 16 gigabyte device, imagine that. Of course, we would have to take in consideration whether the photos are black and white or full color, as well as the quality of the photo which is measure in megapixels. Thank about this, you could store 200 to 9,000 pictures on your device.

That is a lot of data, just remember if you choose to put 8 to 30 movies on your device, you will not be able to store anything else on your device.

No need to fear you can always expand your memory.

Most smartphones, tablet pc’s, laptops, or PC’s have to share their storage with other files, applications, software, operating systems. 

With that being the case you could run out of storage pretty quick.

Why is storage so important? Because of the following question.

I am often asked, what type of tablet or smartphone should I get? 

My first consideration would be the processor, next the internal memory, which includes the ram as well the memory for data storage (this will be broken down into three categories memory the device uses and memory you will use to store your data and the memory used to transfer data from the processor to the ram). I would also consider how much expandable memory the device can handle.

So, what does the cloud have to do with storage and gigabytes?

Most major companies now offer to store all of your data in the cloud, the cloud is nothing more than a warehouse with great computing power and lots of storage. If that sounds like a mainframe computer, then you are not far off base.

The circle of life.

Your device connects to a database, that database connects to nodes and computer networks, which connects to servers and the internet.

How does this help you?

Imagine all of the data that we spoke about above was stored on your device, and that device met a catastrophic end. What would happen to all of those emails, songs, movies, etc.?

You could have backed it up to your home computer, or you can back it up to the cloud.

Even if you did not care about all of your personal data stored on your device. Your user information, your purchase history and other pertinent data is stored in a cloud somewhere.

The business application of the cloud is far more greater, consider this. At your finger tips you can purchase just about any commodity known to man with a few taps on your phone. Where is all of that data stored? 

In the cloud, companies like amazon.com, google.com, sony.com, walmart.com, microsoft.com, target.com, bestbuy.com, apple.com, sears.com, use the cloud to store merchandise codes, personnel data, store locations, your personal data, and so much more in the cloud.

Welcome to the cloud and cloud computing. 

What’s next? Yes, we will soon speak into the air listen for the reply, learn it, buy it, teach it, record it, play it, watch it, listen to it, read it. 

So that leads me to the question what is IT.

In the beginning there was the abacus.