Thursday 8 November - Installing Hardware

Today was a great day, the only day just for level three's. The first thing we did is go through installing hardware with John. We gathered round his desk where a computer base unit was and he asked us to have a look and see what was missing. Once we determined what was missing (RAM and Graphics card) we wrote it on the board and then had to go find the right type of RAM and Graphics card for the computer and make sure it would be compatible. We put about 2GB of RAM in and found the right Graphics card to suit the computer.

We then had a look at why a normal Desktop costs less than an Apple Mac Pro Desktop.

We came to the conclusion it’s because the whole case is made out of solid aluminium instead of flimsy, thin metal and Apple makes their machines so people can’t upgrade it except the RAM.

The main task we had to do was, each of us had our own base unit and had to upgrade a part of the internal hardware and install some software on the computer (once we installed the hardware).

Before I installed the hardware I took a photo of what it looked like before and recorded that photo so I can make a presentation once I had completed everything. I kept taking photos all the way through so I would have a photo for each stage. 

Once I installed the new hardware I then connected it to a monitor so I could make sure it was in good working order (luckily enough it was). 

When I got logged on, I then installed some software/a program (can’t remember the name of it) and took screen shots/photos of each stage of installing the program, once it was completed I then opened the program and took another photo to prove I had installed it correctly. Once I had done all of that I then created two accounts; one called Susan and one called Steve and set passwords for each one and took more photos to show I had set passwords for both of the accounts. The last thing I did today was set the time for the monitor to go off after 10 minutes of inactivity and for the whole computer to switch its self-off after 30 minutes of inactivity and took a photo of before I done that and after to prove I had changed the switch off time settings.