Information Systems

Many organizations utilize various configurations of hardware and software in order to best provide for the needs of their particular company. In this paper I will be discussing the hardware and software used by the United States Air Force and also my personal home network.

While I was in the U.S. Air Force, the main hardware used in a typical computer consisted of, at the time, fairly up to date products. The Air Force used Intel Pentium based processors. The typical computer had anywhere from a 250-500 Gigabyte (GB) hard drive and also had 2 or 4 GB’s of memory. A generic video card was used and most systems would include a Compact Disc (CD) drive with burning capabilities.

On the software side, every Air Force computer system I encountered was a Windows-based operating system. Most of them ran Windows XP and toward the end of my time in the Air Force I started to see Windows Vista become available. As with most organizations, Microsoft Office was the software suite of choice. I utilized Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Word, and especially Microsoft Office on a daily basis. Internet Explorer was the default option for Internet browsing, but we also had the option of using Mozilla Firefox for that function.

Microsoft Outlook was the tool used for email traffic. It utilized the Air Force’s own exchange server for the sending and receiving of email. These systems were also connected to various work based networks to allow for mass software updates to be pushed to all computers on the network from the Communications Squadron in charge on maintaining the network. In addition, all of our systems were connected to another server to allow for mass storage of documents. This allowed all users on the network to be able to see other user’s work and collaborate on projects in a much more effective manner that sending draft documents back and forth through email.

As for my personal home computer use, I have recently converted to the phenomenon known...