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Someday, you'll get really, really mad at Windows. When you feel like putting your fist through the computer screen, tossing your Windows XP CD in a bonfire, or hiring an expensive Windows expert to drive out the devils within (insist on a Microsoft Certified System Exorcist, of course), read through these sections. They may help you understand why and how Windows has limitations. It also may help you communicate with the geeky rescue team that tries to bail you out, whether you rely on the store that sold you the PC, the guy in the apartment downstairs, or your 8-year-old daughter's nerdy classmate.
Hardware and software
At the most fundamental level, all computer stuff comes in one of two flavors: Either it's hardware or it's software. Hardware is anything you can touch — a computer screen, a mouse, a CD. Software is everything else: e-mail messages, that letter to your Aunt Martha, pictures of your last vacation, programs like Microsoft Office. If you have a roll of film developed and put on a CD, the shiny, round CD is hardware — you can touch it — but the pictures themselves are software. Get the difference?
Windows XP is software. You can't touch it. Your PC, on the other hand, is hardware. Kick the computer screen and your toe hurts. Drop the big box on the floor and it smashes into a gazillion pieces. That's hardware.
Chances are very good that one of the major PC manufacturers — Dell, HP/Compaq, IBM, Gateway/eMachines, Toshiba, Sony, and the like — made your hardware. Microsoft, and Microsoft alone, makes Windows XP. The PC manufacturers don't make Windows. Microsoft doesn't make PCs, although it does make other kinds of hardware — video game boxes, keyboards, mice, and a few other odds and ends.
 | When you first set up your PC, Windows had you click "I accept" to a licensing agreement that's long enough to wrap around the Empire State Building. If you're curious about what you accepted, a printed copy of the End User License Agreement is in the box that your PC came in or in the CD packaging (if you bought Windows XP separately from your computer). If you can't find your copy, choose Start --> Help and Support. Type eula in the Search text box and press Enter. |
When you bought your computer, you paid for a license to use one copy of Windows on the PC that you bought. The PC manufacturer paid Microsoft a royalty so that it could sell you Windows along with your PC. You may think that you got Windows from, say, Dell — indeed, you may have to contact Dell for technical support on Windows questions — but, in fact, Windows came from Microsoft.
Why do PCs have to run Windows?
The short answer: You don't have to run Windows on your PC.
The PC you have is a dumb box. To get the dumb box to do anything worthwhile, you need a computer program that takes control of the PC and makes it do things such as show Web pages on the screen, respond to mouse clicks, or print résumés. An operating system controls the dumb box and makes it do worthwhile things, in ways that mere humans can understand.
Without an operating system, the computer can sit in a corner and count to itself, or put profound messages on the screen, such as "Non-system disk or disk error. Insert system disk and press any key when ready." If you want your computer to do more than that, though, you need an operating system.
Windows is not the only operating system in town. The single largest competitor to Windows is an operating system called Linux. Some people prefer Linux to Windows, and the debates between pro-Windows and pro-Linux camps can become rather heated. Suffice it to say that about 99 percent of all individual PC users stick with Windows. You probably will, too.
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