Unit 2 - M2

Task 6b (M2)

An apple Mac and a Laptop are completely different systems and they have lots of different programmes on them, the cost of an apple mac laptop is £399.00 so it is pretty expensive, compared to a normal laptop that specialises in windows, it is more expensive because a normal windows laptop costs £299.99, so this is just under £100 cheaper than an Apple Mac, and that’s why they are more popular in some ways because lots of people don’t see the point in paying nearly £100 more for something that does the same as another laptop, but this isn’t actually the case because they both specialise is different programmes.  

There are a lot of things on the Mac which are useful, they can open almost all PC files and can coexist on local networks with PCs.  The Mac can also run Windows for 100% compatibility which is useful because you can argue that the Mac does both things that a PC does. But a PC also has Mac-based files such as DMG, but they cannot be opened on PCs natively, but you can install software that can read, and possibly write Mac-based files on a PC. For design reasons, the Mac is more advertised than the PC, they mostly attract graphic designers, video and music producers, tech journalists and app developers, whereas the PC attracts business users, they tend to use Windows hardware due to compatibility. Both are used by users such as home workers and for businesses, but Mac is used for more creative businesses.

Viruses come up on almost every computing device if they are not looked after properly, and since Macs are not as popular as PCs, there are fewer malware written to target Macs, although software’s like Java can come up as a threat. More lagging will happen with PC’s and they are more at threat with viruses than Apple Mac’s, and sometimes it won’t reach the expected performance. So for virus wise, I would choose an Apple Mac because they don’t pop up as much as they do on Pc’s.

For repairs as well the Mac would be a lot better because Apple provide a lot more help for damages than what Microsoft for example do with PC’s. I would say the Mac would be better to get encase something happened to it, because Apple can extend warrantee’s.

After researching both computers, I would say that an Apple Mac will be better to get because it is used more for design work and you get your money’s worth, even though it might be a bit more expensive than a normal computer, you have a better chance of getting it repaired for nothing because the warrantee covers it. So I would say that purchasing the Apple Mac is the best decision for the Design Team.

Unit 2 - P8 witness statement

Witness statement
Learner name		Macauley McBride
Qualification
Unit number and title		Unit 2
Assignment
Description of activity undertaken (please be as specific as possible)
Using the computer system provided, carry out the following routine maintenance: • Create a file structure under user as follows A folder labelled with your name and within this folder create 3 folders labelled Home, Work and Study • Configure the operating system to perform the following: • back-up procedures • automatic scheduling and deletion of unwanted data • archiving • defragmentation • deleting temporary files • Cleaning keyboard, mouse, display screen of the computer provided • replacing consumables printer paper in the printer provided • replacing the damaged mouse
Assessment and grading criteria
Task 4. undertake routine maintenance tasks on a standalone computer system. P8
How the activity meets the requirements of the assessment and grading criteria, including how and where the activity took place
The Activity took place in the I.T class, following each instruction that was on the assignment, Macauley completed P8.
Witness name	Callum James		Job role
Witness signature	C.James		Date	01.05.2014
Assessor name
Assessor signature			Date

Unit 2 - M3 & D2

M3

Evaluate the performance of a PC

The PC I am going to evaluate is the Novabench system, in the picture below is the score of what the system got.

 The score for the RAM tells you how much information it can hold at one current time this pc received an average score for the ram due to it only having 6gb. The RAM on this computer can be improved by simply adding more RAM this system has 6GB RAM a good way to improve that would be to remove the 6GB and add two 8GB totalling in 16GB of ram, doing this would allow the computer to  hold more programs at any one time.

The score for the cpu tells you how fast the processor is and how many calculations it makes per seconds so in this case the computer has a very powerful processor this is reflected in the scores as it scored 796 overall. The processor score can be improved with two methods firstly by overclocking and secondly by installing a more powerful processor however this is not necessary as this computer already has a top of the range i7. Doing this would make improve the all-around speed of the computer.

The score for the GPU shows how powerful the gpu is and as you can see from these scores this pc received a very high score for the gpu, this means it has a high quality gpu. To improve the gpu you could consider removing the current gpu’s and adding 2 NVidia and gtx 690’s which will drastically improve the graphics performance as these are the highest quality graphics cards on the market and deliver the best graphics performance available. 

D2

 There are a few things that I think could improve the performance of the computer system. One of them is that they could increase internal speed of microprocessor; this is an increase in the frequency of the clock. This can increase the speed of data processing, but this is will not work without increasing the number of information transferred on a given lapse of time.  Also they could modify the external peripherals. This will increase the performances towards outside, the processors are definitely faster than the peripherals, so this would help a lot I think. Another improvement I can think of is to Increase data bus and address bus speed. This will make it easier to bring more instructions and data to be treated with the processor over a short period of time, so it will mean that there is less waiting.

Unit 2 - P7

Witness Statements for P5 & P6 - Unit 2

unit 2 - D1

Expand on your notes for Task 3 explaining the purpose of different software utilities to explain how each can improve the performance of a computer system. You need to cover:

Security virus protection and/or firewalls

Having security virus protection on your computer can improve the performance of a computer system because it detects, prevents, and takes action to remove malicious software programs, such as viruses and worms.  A lot of people use programmes such as Microsoft security essentials to help protect their computer against viruses. Computer viruses are software programs that are designed to interfere with computer operation; record, corrupt, or delete data; they also spread themselves to other computers and throughout the Internet. To help prevent the most current viruses, it’s helpful to update the antivirus software regularly. You can set up most types of antivirus software so that they update automatically, so this helps the user because it will automatically stop any viruses coming through.

Clean up tools for removal of cookies and/or internet history and/or defragmentation

Clean up tools help the performance of a computer system because they clear up a lot of unnecessary data that is slowing the computer down. For example, when the user has so much history building up and uses so many cookies to make the internet work better, it will slow the computer down because it has to deal with all that data as well as all of the stuff that the user is using. So having clean up tools will remove all of the internet history and cookies, and this will make the computer run a lot more quicker and smoother, without any lagging because the computer just has to deal with the stuff that the user is using, and not all of the history and cookies that the user would have had on the computer before.

 Drive formatting

Drive formatting helps the performance of the computer system because when a computer's hard drive is formatted, all of the data on the disk is completely erased and a fresh copy of the system's operating system is reinstalled. Even after all of the operating system files have been copied on to the formatted drive, there will be a larger amount of free space on the hard drive. Computers run faster and more efficiently when there is more room on the hard drive, so formatting the drive can increase the computer's performance in terms of data storage.

After a few years of using the computer, different files that run the operating system can become corrupted, which can slow down many functions of the computer. Hard drive utility applications can sometimes clean and repair these files, but the easiest way to boost performance is to do a complete format of the hard drive and reinstall all necessary files, returning them to their uncorrupted state, so this makes drive formatting very important to the computer because it is very easy to turn the computer from slow to fast, without losing any work.

unit 2 - M1

unit 2 - P3

unit 2 - P2

unit 2 - P1