The software I used were Microsoft Word, to word process my reports. I used Microsoft Excel to do automatic calculations, which helped to produce my wage slips. I used Paint to produce my logo, I could have used a more professional program such as Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop to make my logo look more professional.
The input devices are:
- Keyboard – These are the most common input devices, each of the keys on a keyboard are connected to a switch that closes when the key is processed. If the user is quite new to computers, the process of typing can be slow.
- Mouse – A ‘mouse’ is very easy to use, there are usually 2 or 3 buttons on a mouse. When the cursor is placed over an icon, for example, the mouse buttons can be clicked, double clicked, or right clicked. Sensors measure the movement of the ball, and from this, the computer can work out the direction and distance the mouse has travelled.
- Scanner – With scanners, a picture is passed through it and is converted into digital data. One of the benefits of using a scanner is that the image can be manipulated and edited.
- Camera –They are like scanners, they save an image as a series of dots known as pixels. The Image taken can then be uploaded to a computer and also may be edited using a photo editing software.
I didn’t make use of the camera or scanner; my coursework could have been improved by using the scanner to scan in a drawn logo.
The output devices are:
- Printer - The printer I used is a Hewlett Packard LaserJet 4050, which was the only printer we could have used. It’s a laser printer, meaning that the data can be sent to the printer in complete pages, one page at a time, they are similar to photocopiers. Advantages are that, they are very quiet, very fact (10 pages a minute), and the printing produced is in very high resolution and can produce high quality documentations. The most cost effective printer would be the ink jet, as I costs less than laser printers and produces better quality printouts than dot matrix printouts.
- Monitor – also known as VDU’s (Visual Display Unit’s) are used when visual information is needed and is most commonly used as an output device.
User guide for system
- Firstly turn on the machine and log onto the network by entering your username and password, then, let the network load.
- Open the application the needed to create the logo, in this case it’s Paint. Use the various tools on the left hand side and the extensive colours on the bottom to create the logo.
- When you are happy, click on ‘File’ at the top left hand side of the screen then ‘Save’ give it a file name then click on the drop down button next to ‘Save as type’ and save it as a JPEG, these are better than bitmap’s because JPEG’s are much smaller in file size.
- The mouse is only really needed in this program unless you need to enter a number in order to rotate the graphic to a certain degree.
- Next, open the spreadsheet application; in this case it is Microsoft Excel. Enter the various data and formula into the cells using the keyboard.
- When this is done, go to ‘File’ then ‘Save’ and choose a file name before clicking ‘Save’.
- When printing, click ‘File’ then ‘Print’ choose the desired number of copies you wish to print then click ‘OK’.
- To shut down the system, simply click the ‘Start’ button on the bottom left hand size of the screen, then ‘Log Off’.
User Documentation
The system must be tested both during building and after it has been built. As the name suggests, user documents are written to help the people who will perform tasks using the system. They give instructions on how to perform tasks, it can be hard to write because it needs to be written in simple language form so the users can clearly understand what it is they need to do. A good tip would be to pretend that the person reading it is thick!
In my user documentation, to make it better, I would break it down into smaller steps so it is easier for the person who is reading it to understand.
A trouble-shooting guide is a way of help if you unsure of what to do in the program you are working on. In the
Microsoft applications I used, such as Word or Excel, the shortcut key to bring up the troubleshooter is ‘F1’.
A common problem that I came across during the coursework was that the computer crashed in the middle of a word document, the problem was resolved by rebooting the system, but it would then be hit or miss, as my work would either be lost or recovered.
How ICT has benefited the system
IT has helped my system in a number of ways:
Advantages
It helped create the wage slips in a much more quicker and efficient way, by using the mail merge technique; it saves time instead of producing 10 separate wage slips.
Using ICT saves on storage, you can keep a database with all your employees information, which saves keeping information in large filing cabinets, it also take time to search for a particular employee. In work, fewer staff are needed to look after the computer system and more than one person can access the same data from their network P.C
Disadvantages
The disadvantages of keeping your employees information on your computer would be that, information could be lost, or your computer may catch a virus, causing all your files to be infected thus, having to wipe off all memory from your system.
The system would also need to be kept secure and away from hackers, meaning that the system must be maintained by people, therefore, training costs could be high Setting up a computer system or network can be very expensive. Systems for large organisations can cost millions of pounds. Even though they are very comprehensive, computer systems are not perfect, if there is a system failure, important data could be lost.
My system
I worked on the school computers, the system worked good, however it was quite restricting due to some of the features that you could not access. An alternative solution would be to use my home computer, but that would mean not being able to do any work in lesson time. Given more time, I would
