Hello, Operator?

“In A Bind” is an interactive site that searches the web for the cheapest prices on your textbooks based on the information that you give it about your classes. Once you've picked everything you need, you can purchase or rent the books and we'll ship them right to your doorstep.

Smooth Operator

An operating system (OS), according to the book, is a set of programs containing instructions that work together to coordinate all the activities among computer hardware resources. In lamens terms, the operating system is like the backbone of your computer. It controls many different functions on a computer like:

• Starting and shutting down a computer
• Providing user interface
• Managing programs
• Coordinating tasks
• Configuring devices
• Establishing an internet connection
• Managing performance
• Providing file management and other utilities
• Automatically updating itself and certain utility programs

The great part of an operating system is that it is very versatile. There are systems that support a single user and a single task operating system, which allows one user to run one program at a time, but there are also systems that support a single user using two or more programs at one time, which is what most personal computers have today. Most operating systems on computers today are also device-independent which means that they can run on computers made by different manufacturers; as opposed to the first operating systems which only ran on a specific type of computer (aka device dependent). There are three main categories of operating systems which are:

• Stand-alone OS: a system that works on a desktop computer, notebook computer, or mobile computing device
• Ex. Windows 7, Mac OS X, UNIX, and Linux
•  Server OS: a system that is designed specifically to support a network
• Ex. Windows Server 2008, UNIX, Linux, Solaris, and NetWare
• Embedded OS: a system found on mobile devices and many consumer electronics
• Ex. Windows Embedded CE, Windows Phone 7, Palm OS, iPhone OS, BlackBerry, Google Android, embedded Linux, and Symbian OS

And The Winner Is...

In order to manage our systems at "In A Bind", we are going to need an operating system that is not only device independent, but can also support multiple programs running at the same time and being used by multiple people. The perfect is difficult to determine. The operating system for us would have to be a system that can work as a server OS, like Windows Server 2008. The server OS would hold all of the main resources that our employees could utilize to serve our clients in the best way possible. The server OS can also handle all sizes of networks which will definitely be beneficial as our business begins to expand and we gain more customers along with having networking capabilities. However, there are also qualities that a stand alone OS that I believe would be perfect for our company as well. Stand alone OS's can work from a desktop computer, notebook computer, or a mobile device; which means that no matter where out employees are, they would be able to tap into our resources that are contained on a small network and access what they need. We might start out with a stand alone OS and move to a server OS as our company expands.

A Little Help from Our Friends

One of the great features of an operating system would be the utility programs. A utility program is a system software that performs maintence-type tasks on a computer or mobile device. This can be anything from searching for and managing files, uninstalling files, cleaning and defragmenting disks, setting up screen savers and so on. Two programs that I think will be really beneficial for our company would be the disk defragmenter and disk cleanup. As a company begins to grow, it's very common that things will become a little disorganized, especially on a computer. The disk defragmenter will reorganize all of the files we have on our hard disks thus creating more space and making it easier for the operating system to access data. The disk cleanup will remove unnecessary items on the hard disk. This can be things like temporary internet files and unused program files. We would also need other utilities like a file manager which will sort through files and create shortcuts, a personal firewall that will protect our data and a spyware and adware remover that will help us maintain our privacy.

All in all, our operating system will be the foundation of computer activity, so picking the right one would be imperative. But, with the right one and properly trained employees who know the ins and outs of the system, our activities using the computer can go off without a hitch. In theory, that is.