Operating Systems and Applications

Operating Systems and Applications

Johnna Davis

Operating Systems and Applications

In the workplace many things have changed in the past twenty years. The computer age has gone from dumb terminals to PCs that have a 2.8gig processor in it. The operating system itself has come from not having an operating system, to having Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The computer age has taken great strides in a short amount of time and it has aided to the business world in many ways. In this document I will discuss the different operating systems and applications that my business uses in day to day activity to accomplish our work load and job. The operating systems we use are Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP. As far as the applications that are mainly used by our employees is Microsoft Office, Microsoft, Outlook and Rumba (AS400 system). Between the operating system that our users use on a daily basis and the three pieces of software I have mentioned these help them complete their day successfully on a daily basis.

Windows 2000 Professional

Windows 2000 Pro is a very good and improved operating system since Windows 95. Most all our users use Windows 2000 Pro. Windows 2000 Pro is an operating system that offers many features to our users. Some of the features include: peripheral support and features that extend notebook capabilities, it runs with enterprise level quality, speed of operating system is faster and more manageable when running multiple applications, and finally Windows 2000 Pro provides integrated support for Internet-enabled applications which can help any business that is using the internet to access their applications in any way. With the company I am employed with we not only use the

internet to access applications at times we use the Intranet, which is a web based way to access just our information for our company, when no one else but the employees of our company can access. Some of those applications are Peoplesoft, Discoverer, and Kronos.

These applications are vital and without the capability that Windows 2000 Pro gives our users to access Internet or Intranet sites through this operating system then there would be many employees not able to finish or do their job on a daily basis.

Windows XP Professional

Windows XP is also used by some of our users. Windows 2000 is the main operating system that is used, but we allow our field technicians have Windows XP because they are out in the field on a daily basis. The reason we allow them to have Windows XP is because it is more reliable than Windows 2000 and the most important reason is the speed of the operating system. With having the fast speed that Windows XP provides our technicians are able to service our customer in a fast and efficient manner. This makes not only our customer happy, but it makes us happy. Windows XP is a great operating system and should be used by businesses everywhere when possible.

Microsoft Office

In today’s workplace Microsoft Office is probably not a tool that employees can go without. The Microsoft Office suite includes Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, and Microsoft PowerPoint. Microsoft Word is used by our employees to create documents, letters, and even envelope labels. Microsoft Excel is used to create

spreadsheets for inventory of computers, cell phones, printers, etc. Microsoft Excel is also used with our company to keep up with driving expenses, hotel expenses, and food expenses also. Spreadsheets are used all over our company for many reasons. These are just a few that spreadsheets are used for in our company. Microsoft Access is software that uses databases to keep track of items also like spreadsheets. Instead of columns and rows like spreadsheets Access or databases use tables, forms, and reports to create their databases. Our billing department is probably the employees in our company that utilizes Microsoft Access the most. We have a few employees in our company that compile databases of customers by what they have ordered, whether it be cable or internet. These databases are in such mass quantities that some of our users use two PCs to do their job every day. I myself have added memory to their machines so they can run these databases all at one time. These databases are that big. Finally, Microsoft