Thursday, June 18, 2009

7. Differentiate the designed issues of operating system between a stand alone Pc and a workstation connected to a network.

  • Workstation is a high-end microcomputer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by one person at a time, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term workstation has also been used to refer to a mainframe computer terminal or a PC connected to a network.Historically, workstations had offered higher performance than personal computers, especially with respect to CPU and graphics, memory capacity and multitasking cability. They are optimized for the visualization and manipulation of different types of complex data such as 3D mechanical design, engineering simulation (e.g. computational fluid dynamics), animation and rendering of images, and mathematical plots. Consoles consist of a high resolution display, a keyboard and a mouse at a minimum, but also offer multiple displays, graphics tablets, 3D mice (devices for manipulating and navigating 3D objects and scenes), etc. Workstations are the first segment of the computer market to present advanced accessories and collaboration tools.
  • A desktop or laptop computer that is used on its own without requiring a connection to a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN). Although it may be connected to a network, it is still a stand-alone PC as long as the network connection is not mandatory for its general use.In offices throughout the 1990s, millions of stand-alone PCs were hooked up to the local network for file sharing and mainframe access. Today, computers are commonly networked in the home so that family members can share an Internet connection as well as printers, scanners and other peripherals. When the computer is running local applications without Internet access, the machine is technically a stand-alone PC.

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