Top Ten Things to Know in CS105P

1. What computer should I buy?

• What are the major components of a computer system?
• What are the cost/benefits of each component?
• How does amount of memory effect the overall speed of the machine?

2. What are some tasks that are hard/impossible for a computer to do? Why?

• Hard: speech recognition, handwriting recognition
• Impossible: Interpret song lyrics, pass the Turing Test, speech understanding, etc.

3. What ways can Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint be used in automate office tasks.

• General concepts: when to use Word, Excel, Access
• Specific skills: paragraph vs. character formatting, relative and absolute cell references, etc.

4. Explain the last mile problem and potential solutions.

5. How is right-mouse clicking related to objects?

6. How to calculate with computer quantities.

• If a word processing document is 30 kilobytes and a floppy disk holds 1.5 megabytes, how many documents can you fit onto a floppy disk?
• If you connect to your ISP at 33 kilobits persecond how long will it take you to download a sound file that is 2 Megabytes.

7. What is digital data? How is a digital device different from an analog device?

8. How to use a spreadsheet to calculate interest income and loan payments.

9. What are Internet cookies? What can they be used for? Can your turn them off?

10. How can you send anonymous email? Encrypted email? Signed Email?