Computer construction for laymen

Now picture this. As an IT person and an old geek I have always found it quite simple to tell how computer is built and what are its parts for. But then I met some people and they asked me a very simple question: Yeah I know there's a processor in, but what does it actually do?

I went on about computing power, and data and all I got were blank stares.

I needed some example most people can relate to, and it actually is very simple.

So what are those parts of the computer most similar to? There we go:

Looks familiar right? :) Human body analogy, by Ishtar (there are other approaches of course)

So there we go:

As you can see there are some cryptic abbreviations in this picture. You may meet them when talking about computers so why not find out what they mean?

HUMAN BODY PART	COMPUTER PART NAME	SHORT DESCRIPTION & FUNCTION
Brain	CPU	Central Processing Unit, or processor is like the prefrontal cortex in brain, responsible for thinking/processing and execution of data.
	GPU	Graphics Processing Unit - like occipital lobe in brain processes and makes sense of visual data, GPU is usually "the processor on a graphics card"
	Sound Chip	in other words "the sound processor" is a part sometimes present on motherboards, especially in cheaper laptops but most of the time on a sound card, and is a bit like temporal lobe in brain responsible for processing sound.
Short term memory	RAM	RAM means Random access memory and is the kind of memory in computer that gets wiped if you switch computer off, but is needed to help processors process data, or save it to disk, so really like our short term memory.
Long term memory	HDD or SDD	HDD is an abberviation used for traditional hard disk drives, while SDD is for more modern solid state disk drives. Function of both is the same. Keep data saved even when computer is off. Exactly like long term memory.
Eyes	Camera & Scanner	used to collect visual images, and pretty much nothing else. All transfer and processing is done by bus (see below) and GPU.
Ears	Microphone	Used to collect sounds. Ears have slightly more complicated function as well, because they also help establish your position, so they are also a bit like mobile phones and laptops position sensors.
Mouth and Lips	Speaker & Headphones	When used to emit sound lips and mouth are the equivalent of sound output devices of your computer. Actual processing is done by brain or sound chip.
Nerves, nervous system	Data bus	All elements of computer attached to motherboard are connected via multitude of links allowing them to communicate with each other, if you look at the motherboard some of those pretty metallic lines on the surface are a part of bus, much like little nerves in our bodies.
Heart, Lungs and Stomach	PSU	PSU stands for Power Supply Unit and is essentially the bulky piece all external power cables are connected to in a desktop computer, and all small power cables inside of it. It essentially manages the electric power so that all parts of your computer have when and as much as needed. Much like Lungs and Stomach give us air and food and heart pumps them to all body parts. Funny thing is that you computer if attached with a PSU not able to support all devices (with too little power output) will starve them pretty much like you can starve your body, and those devices will malfunction or stop functioning at all.
Digestive system and veins	Power cables	after reading the above this seems pretty simple. Just like your gastric parts and veins distribute food and air though you body, power cables distribute electricity inside your computer.
Hands and Fingers	Keyboard and Mouse	Now this is simplifying what your hands can do, but they are indeed input devices.
Inside of your body	Motherboard and Controllers	All of the computer components are attached to motherboard. Motherboard is like the base for all buses, input interfaces and all communication devices. It is like the complicated suspension mechanism you actually have in your body making all you internal organs fit in place and take pretty much the same space. If you need to add some very special device to this system you have tu use controller, which may be built in the motherboard or come separately as a card. Now this our body can't do yet ;)
Outside of your body	Computer case	nothing to add really. You can have a tough "case", or a pretty one. No matter what all of them will have input and output holes and a lot of slots for extra accessories/peripherals ;)
CPU Cooling	Our skull!	Believe it or not, but our skull is the place we lose a lot of heat through. Even though our brains do not overheat we too have systems to remove excess heat. Computers can get damaged if they overheat, so nowadays pretty much every processor (CPU, GPU) has cooling system, so does the entire machine (fans, water cooling).

I hope this manual will help you understand your machine better.

And if you're a computer GURU and think you can improve this text, don't hesitate to comment.


Images used:
"Wheel mouse" by Qurren (Qurren's file) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

Picture of the Bose Computer MusicMonitor speaker system by Ben Stassen's [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

"Black-white 2 Vista" icon theme by DBGthekafu [GPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Dieses Bild zeigt eine SATA-Festplatte (Western Digital WD740 - 10.000 U/Min - 74 GB). by Darkone  [CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

A photo of a DDR SDRAM.By Utente:Sassospicco (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

The pin grid array at the bottom of a Motorola XC68020 (prototype of the MC68020) by David Monniaux [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

All other images are public domain

LG G2 review half a year later - massive memory issues

It was the Phone of the year when released and indeed LG G2 sports some fabulous stats. It looks good, feels good, operates good and overall was a great mobile phone vastly superior to my favourite line of Samsungs I've been using before.

One thing I have overlooked was the lack of memory card slot. But with 32GB storage and 2GB RAM this seemed not to be a problem. Wrong!

A several months of using it and I run into such massive problems that only a full factory reset and following careful application grooming helped me regain control over the device.
It must have been a more common problem, because newer LG G3 already has a memory slot.

What were the symptoms?

1. Tapping stopped waking up display. - I thought... oh well this is nouvelle, maybe it wasn't tested for that many taps and it died... I can survive it. Yes I am that lazy when it comes to call service desks :D
2. Phone started getting very slow, then gave me a message that it has full memory. - I have promptly removed almost all of my photos (quite a lot of them), all videos, all downloads and documents. And it started working, but still quite slow. I kept checking for syncs, missed data. Old applications storage... Nothing helped.
3. Waking up the phone took a trial and error approach, it would sometimes wake up after pressing the buttons at the back, but most of the times it would not. When it would it would tell me I have no connection, while on WiFi and full bars, or would just display completely unresponsive screen and then time it out and die.

After a lot of tries I have decided to connect it to my computer (while it still sort of worked) and in a painfully long process (it kept hanging and disconnecting) back up all my stuff (yes LG backup stopped working) and perform a factory reset. My reasoning was: If the phone is broken the problem will manifest itself with only a handful basic apps within the first week. If not, then it must have been one of the applications.

I was wrong. After gradually adding applications I noticed that LG G2 can't gracefully handle a lot of installed applications. Many processes running in background, a lot of cached data will pretty much brick it.

At this point it seems like the only solution is to keep number of the installed applications managed. And to be honest for me, who uses a lot of applications on daily basis this is a no go. I need to be able to keep more than 40 apps on my device. And currently this seems to be the level my mobile handles OK. It may be different for other users, because not all applications are the same, some don't run processes, some store less data.

Another option is to regularly delete application cache. Also not perfect. I like some apps to keep my data, it makes it quicker to work with them.

With no option to expand memory I am now just waiting until my contract is finished so I can replace this phone.