Computer Hardware Quotes & Sayings

Her computer's fan whirred to life, blowing warm air onto her fingers. Two flame-red slits glowed from the monitor. The speakers boomed. "I lived! I died! I live again!"
Olivie had dealt with blue screens, frozen hourglasses, and even the odd hardware conflict back in the day. This was new. — Choong JayVee

My first impulse, when presented with any spanking-new piece of computer hardware, is to imagine how it will look in ten years' time, gathering dust under a card table in a thrift shop. — William Gibson

Even though most people won't be directly involved with programming, everyone is affected by computers, so an educated person should have a good understanding of how computer hardware, software, and networks operate. — Brian Kernighan

I took this 'how to build computers' course basically because I'm sick and tired of getting ripped off by cheesy computer companies. Software baffles me. I like hardware. I used to change my own oil, and now I want to build my own computer so I can have what I want. — Pat Cadigan

The difference between the best worker on computer hardware and the average may be 2 to 1, if you're lucky. With automobiles, maybe 2 to 1. But in software, it's at least 25 to 1. The difference between the average programmer and a great one is at least that. The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world. And when you're in a field where the dynamic range is 25 to 1, boy, does it pay off. — Steve Jobs

I use a laptop more as a tool, as sort of the central artery. Everything goes through the digital audio card of my computer, but if I had my druthers I'd do everything in dedicated hardware. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

Every computer divides itself into its hardware and its software, the machine host to its algorithm, the human being to his mind. It is hardly surprising that men and women have done what computers now do long before computers could do anything at all. The dissociation between mind and matter in men and machines is very striking; it suggests that almost any stable and reliable organization of material objects can execute an algorithm and so come to command some form of intelligence. — David Berlinski

The computer does things that can't be done with hardware, like freezing sounds. — Keith Fullerton Whitman

Just as Morse code provides a good introduction to the nature of codes, the telegraph provides a good introduction to the hardware of the computer. — Charles Petzold

Just remember: you're not a 'dummy,' no matter what those computer books claim. The real dummies are the people who-though technically expert-couldn't design hardware and software that's usable by normal consumers if their lives depended upon it. — Walt Mossberg

There is only one real computer - the universe - whose hardware is made up of non-spatial states of consciousness and software is made up of superhuman as well as non-superhuman thoughts. — Kedar Joshi

The NSA employs more mathematicians, buys more computer hardware, and intercepts more messages than any other organization in the world. — Simon Singh

I always find myself stopping to write down ideas of things I'd like to make from computer hardware items to things new moms need - inventions to share with others to make their lives more fun or interesting or easy. — Lisa Loeb

Our minds have the incredible capacity to both alter the strength of connections among neurons, essentially rewiring them, and create entirely new pathways. (It makes a computer, which cannot create new hardware when its system crashes, seem fixed and helpless). — Susannah Cahalan

Cloud computing offers individuals access to data and applications from nearly any point of access to the Internet, offers businesses a whole new way to cut costs for technical infrastructure, and offers big computer companies a potentially giant market for hardware and services. — Jamais Cascio

Imagine a computer. The monitor, keyboard, and processor are the hardware. Without any software to run it, your computer would be worthless. Your body is your hardware and your mindset is your operating system. It gives you access to the power of the hardware, and determines what software you can run. It lets you get the most out of your computer, allowing you to balance your checkbook and even create 3-D designs. Your mindset determines how you perceive and interact with the world. — Mike Cernovich

The creative imitator looks at products or services from the viewpoint of the customer. IBM's personal computer is practically indistinguishable from the Apple in its technical features, but IBM from the beginning offered the customer programs and software. Apple maintained traditional computer distribution through specialty stores. IBM - in a radical break with its own traditions - developed all kinds of distribution channels, specialty stores, major retailers like Sears, Roebuck, its own retail stores, and so on. It made it easy for the consumer to buy and it made it easy for the consumer to use the product. These, rather than hardware features, were the "innovations" that gave IBM the personal computer market. — Peter F. Drucker

Adding hardware to any computer is hard. The reality is, you're sticking in disks, trying to run installers. We do a very sophisticated installation and de-install but it's invisible to the user and happens almost instantaneously. — Jeff Hawkins

The most amazing achievement of the computer software industry is its continuing cancellation of the steady and staggering gains made by the computer hardware industry. — Henry Petroski

Hardware: This is the part of the computer that stops working when you spill beer on it. — Dave Barry

The hardware manufacturers, game designers, cable companies and computer companies and, in fact, film studios are going to ensure that this thing marches on. They know that they are going to make an enormous amount of money from it. — Thomas Dolby

When I was at Tek, I was frustrated that computer hardware was being improved faster than computer software. I wanted to invent some software that was completely different, that would grow and change as it was used. That's how wiki came about. — Ward Cunningham

Our hardware is likely to turn into something like us a lot faster than we are likely to turn into something like our hardware. Our hardware is evolving at the speed of light, while we are still the product, for the most part, of unskilled labor. But there is another argument against the need to implant computing devices, be they glass or goo. It's a very simple one, so simple that some have difficulty grasping it. It has to do with a certain archaic distinction we still tend to make, a distinction between computing and "the world." Between, if you like, the virtual and the real. I very much doubt that our grandchildren will understand the distinction between that which is a computer and that which isn't. — William Gibson

This entailed switching around by hand ENIAC's rat's nest of cables and resetting its switches. At first the programming seemed to be a routine, perhaps even menial task, which may have been why it was relegated to women, who back then were not encouraged to become engineers. But what the women of ENIAC soon showed, and the men later came to understand, was that the programming of a computer could be just as significant as the design of its hardware. — Walter Isaacson

The burgeoning field of computer science has shifted our view of the physical world from that of a collection of interacting material particles to one of a seething network of information. In this way of looking at nature, the laws of physics are a form of software, or algorithm, while the material world-the hardware-plays the role of a gigantic computer. — Paul Davies

To use a computer analogy, we are running twenty-first-century software on hardware last upgraded 50,000 years ago or more. This may explain quite a lot of what we see in the news. — Ronald Wright

Last time I was recording, I was trying to loop on the computer, but it's really difficult because it's really different from looping on hardware. — Julia Kent

Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software. — Arthur C. Clarke

How many computer programmers does it take to change a light bulb? Are you kidding? That's a hardware problem! — Various

This kind of pragmatism has become a hallmark of our psychological culture. In the mid-1990s, I described how it was commonplace for people to "cycle through" different ideas of the human mind as (to name only a few images) mechanism, spirit, chemistry, and vessel for the soul.14 These days, the cycling through intensifies. We are in much more direct contact with the machine side of mind. People are fitted with a computer chip to help with Parkinson's. They learn to see their minds as program and hardware. They take antidepressants prescribed by their psychotherapists, confident that the biochemical and oedipal self can be treated in one room. They look for signs of emotion in a brain scan. Old jokes about couples needing "chemistry" turn out not to be jokes at all. — Sherry Turkle