What is Hardware?

Hardware is the physical parts of the computer system – the parts that you can touch and see.

A motherboard, a CPU, a keyboard and a monitor are all items of hardware.
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An analogy…

Your hardware is all of the parts that make up your body: bones, muscles, skin, blood, etc.
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What is Software?

Software is a collection of instructions that can be ‘run’ on a computer. These instructions tell the computer what to do.

Software is not a physical thing (but it can of course be stored on a physical medium such as a CD-ROM), it is just a bunch of codes.

An operating system such as Windows XP or Mac OS X, applications such as Microsoft Word, and the instructions that control a robot are all examples of software.
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To continue the analogy…

Your software is all of your thoughts and mental processes: these are the instructions that tell your physical body what to do
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The Difference Between Hardware and Software

Computer hardware is the physical components that make up the computer system. Hardware is useless without software to run on it.

Software is instructions that tell computer hardware what to do. Software is useless unless there is hardware to run it on.

For a computer system to be useful it has to consist of both hardware and software.
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Completing the analogy…

Your physical body cannot function without your thoughts.

And your thoughts need a physical body to exist within
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