If you want to hear sound and music from your computer, you'll need a sound card. On the back of your computer you'll see small color coded holes where you can plug in speakers, microphones, or even head phones so you can enjoy music without disrupting others.

In order to get decent graphics on your computer, you'll need a video card. The video card transmits the video signal to the monitor. Video cards have built in memory the more memory you have the better the graphics on your games and other programs will look. The memory on video cards can't be changed like the memory on the motherboard, so if you want more memory on your video card you'll have to buy a brand-new card. I'll go into more detail on video cards in the upgrading section.

In order to swap data easily and effectively, you might find CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, CD burner and DVD burners helpful. Most programs come on CDs, so it should be important to you to have at least a CD reader in your computer. They are easy to work: there's a button on the front of the CD drive that you push and a little door opens. Insert the CD disk, push the button again, and the door will close. Usually the program will automatically start the install process.

CD-ROM drives are also handy for playing your favorite music CD's or viewing your photo CD's.

CD burners can perform the same functions as CD-ROM drives, but they have a bonus. Burners can copy your photos, music files, word and excel files or any other files you may have to a blank CD. Re-writeable blank cds can be purchased at your local computer store.

Make sure your CD-burner can read the disks you bought. Blank CD disks comes in two formats CD-R and CD-RW. The CD-R disk you can only copy files to it one time, that means that when you are done copying you cannot go back and add more files to that same disk, you have to get a new disk. CD-RW on the other hand can be added to until the disk is full.

When you buy a new computer, it won't come with both a CD-ROM and a CD burner because you do not need both. DVD-ROM drives on the other hand are used for one thing only and that is to play DVD movies on your computer they serve no other function.
Now if you have, access to the Internet you can join web site that will let you download movies for a fee of course. Than you can use the DVD burner to copy the movie to a blank DVD disk and play it on your DVD player that you have connected to your TV. Now you have to read the owners manual on the DVD burner and the DVD player hooked to your TV because there are four major types of blank DVD disk. You have DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW.

You have to make sure that the DVD burner and the DVD player will read the disk. Now with all these components you still do not have a computer system, you need software to let all the components work with one another. This is what the operating system is used for.

There are a couple of major operating systems out there but the most popular is Microsoft Windows. Computers today normally come with Windows XP; some older computers will have Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000 and the newer version Windows XP.

Every computer user should understand these basics for their computer system.