In this article I’m going to help you understand a common computer term: “operating system”, or “OS”.

Maybe you’ve found you have questions and think what OS means,, if so, you’re  not the only one to wonder this.

This actually can be a pretty simple idea to grasp when it’s explained the right way to you, as you’re going to discover as soon as you finish absorbing the information in this computer training article.

First, an OS or operating system,is one type of software.

If you aren’t sure what I mean by software, let me explain:

“Software” refers to all of the parts of the computer that you really aren’t able to observe or handle directly. Software would include things like Microsoft Excel, Internet Explorer, Windows or the Mac OS, plus all of your personal files like individual emails, pictures, MP3s, and so on.

Here’s how you can think about it: hardware is like your brain, a physical part of your body, while software is like your mind or your thoughts — the non-physical part of yourself.

Software runs on hardware, just like your thoughts “run on” your brain.

Does that make sense?So let’s talk about the OS specifically.

So,let me give a couple of examples:  the two best known OS right now are Windows, and Mac OS X (pronounced “Oh Ess Ten” — as in the Roman numeral ten).

Windows Vista and Windows XP are a couple versions of Microsoft Windows.  While Mac OS 10.4 ( a.k.a”Tiger”) and the newer Mac OS 10.5 ( also called”Leopard”) are a couple examples of versions of Mac OS X.

Alright,so what is an OS?

Just think about it like this:when someone is born, they have the instinct to eat, to breathe, etc., and they also have the instinct to observe and soak up what’s going on around them.

In time, a young child learns to talk and walk by learning from the people around them, and as they grow up, they also learn more fundamental skills like reading and writing, hand-eye coordination, etc.

Another way to say this is, they go from barely being able to anything but eat, sleep, and fill diapers, to physical and mental maturity where they have all the general skills they need to go on to more specific skills like driving, playing a sport like football, writing a paper for a class, getting a job — you get the idea.

In some ways, when you turn a computer on, it’s just like a newborn baby, only having a few fundamental”instincts.”

It is able to turn on, and show a picture on the screen, but that’s about it.

The only other thing it can do is check the hard drive, and if the computer finds the files it needs there, it can start up.

This is called “booting”, which is what happens between when you turn the computer on, and when you’re able to actually start using it.

So,it’s just like a child being born and growing up: the OS has the “life experiences” and lessons that give a “child” all the basic skills like walking, talking, reading, writing, and so on, that lets everything else take place.

So in a sense, it’s as if your computer is “born” and “grows up” in the space of 30 to 60 seconds or so( or longer for some computers) that it takes to “boot” the operating system.

So in other words, the operating system is sort of like those fundamental skills we all have and learned as we grew up. More precisely, it’s the software on your computer that draws your desktop, the icons on it, moves the little mouse pointer around on the screen when you move your mouse around, lets you view files and open them, lets you type, etc..

Without the OS, you couldn’t do anything with your computer but turn it on and see useless information like”non system disk or disk error” on a Windows-style computer, or a flashing question mark on one of Apple’s Macintosh PCs.

So even though lots of computer users don’t fully understand what an OS is, or how it works, none of us could use a PC without having one.

Hope that makes sense.