WHY COMPUTER IS IMPORTANT

By Bihongoye Erica (BAPRM 42535)

The advantages of computers are quite clear.  With computers, you can ask this question and I can answer it.  That helps both of us.  With computers and the internet, businesses can sell their products to people far from where they are.  Computers can be used to help create and test new products.

The advantages of computers are many.  One advantage is their time saving nature.  It is much quicker to type a letter than to write one with a pen.  The connection to the internet is of great use.  The ability to research something or ask questions in real time is amazing.  The amount of data that can be stored, manipulated, and retrieved is phenomenal.  Using computers save natural resources by limiting our need of paper and pencils.

Advantages of computers:                                                

• Increases speed of computing and processing information in any other way.
• People can use sophisticated statistical and mathematical tools for decision making and further purposes without learning in details the algorithms used for computing. This way people can use much more sophisticated analytical tools that would have been possible with only manual information processing.
• Computers can store large volumes of information without occupying too much space, as is in the case of information stored in form of books and paper documents.
• Computer processing eliminates the human errors of computing and information processing.
• Information once entered in computer system can be easily accessed by the same person or other persons at different times for different persons. This reduces the work load of capturing same information multiple times for different purposes. It also makes it possible for different person to work with same information, avoiding the possibility of different persons using different versions of the same information.
• The work of entering and editing information is made mush more easy and simple by software that offers many powerful user friendly features for performing these tasks.
• Computer now offer sophisticated and powerful software for representing information in rich formats with visual and video facilities.
• Computers combined with communication technology offer very fast speed and rich communication facility at low cost.
• Computers, with all these features are now used for automating all kinds of equipments and processes.

Disadvantage of Computers

• The cost of computer and associated equipments is falling steadily. Still these equipments are and continue to be much more costly as compared to manual processing equipments like pen and pencil. Also technological complexity of this equipment makes it more difficult to learn and maintain these equipments as compared to equipments of manual information processing.
• Use of computers require additional infrastructure, such as power supply and software back up. This increases the chances of problems due to failure of infrastructure. For example, a computer will not work where there is no electric power supply. Even a laptop with a battery will work without power supply only for a limited period.
• Failures of computer system can be more serious and difficult to correct. For example, one scratch on a hard disk can make the complete data on the disk inaccessible. In comparison, manual system faults have comparatively limited impact. One page torn from a cabinet full of documents has no impact on other documents.
• A computer generally reduces the errors of processing. However if there is an error in input data, it can result in major blunders in the processing which the computer system is unable to detect. In manual systems the chances of such blunders passing undetected and corrected is much less.