Before very long, automatic booting from permanent read-only memory became universal. The very earliest microcomputers, equipped with a front panel, required hand-loading of a bootstrap program to load programs from external storage (paper tape, cassettes, or eventually diskettes). A personal computer may be a desktop computer or a laptop,netbook, tablet or a handheld PC.Įarly computer owners usually had to write their own programs to do anything useful with the machines, which even did not include an operating system. Personal computers may be connected to a local area network (LAN), either by a cable or a wireless connection. Modern personal computers often have connections to the Internet, allowing access to the World Wide Web and a wide range of other resources. Software applications for most personal computers include, but are not limited to, word processing, spreadsheets, databases, web browsers and e-mail clients, digital media playback, games and myriad personal productivity and special-purpose software applications. A related term is “ PC” that was initially an acronym for “personal computer,” but later became used primarily to refer to the ubiquitous Wintel platform. This contrasts with the batch processing or time-sharing models that allowed larger, more expensive minicomputer and mainframe systems to be used by many people, usually at the same time. An illustration of a contemporary personal desktop computerĪ personal computer is a general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities and original sale price make it useful for individuals, and is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator.

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