Fundamentals of Information Technology: Assignment on IT Concepts

This assignment delves into fundamental Information Technology (IT) concepts. It begins by exploring the evolution of software and operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, along with their respective advantages and disadvantages. The document then examines different number systems, such as binary, decimal, octal, and hexadecimal, explaining their applications and significance in IT. E-commerce and m-commerce technologies are discussed, outlining their impact on online transactions and mobile commerce. Furthermore, the assignment analyzes CPU components, comparing Intel and AMD processors, and their performance characteristics. Finally, it addresses organizational information systems, differentiating between transaction processing systems, management information systems, and decision support systems, and their roles at various organizational levels.

Running head: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMME
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMME
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Task 1: Information technology system Concepts
a) The application and the system software trends are changing dynamically with time as
modern technology is replacing the limitations of the old technology. Mainly the
advancement is in the field of cloud technology has promoted the productivity in the software
industries. The productivity software like the multitasking operating system, distributed
operating system, batch processing operating systems and network operating system enables
sharing, collaboration and communication between team members on same project in an
effective way. Operating system installed in machine entirely depends on what type of
machine the user is using. As an example most people use either windows system or MAC
system. In windows system windows 7, 8 or 10 are used and in MAC system MAC OS is
used. Currently Microsoft windows is widely used as most of the consumers’ operating
system is windows and people find it easier and comfortable to use windows system
(Serebrenik & Mens, 2015). Windows users do dislike one feature in the system which is
installing and continuously updating anti-virus software in the system to protect their files
and works from computer viruses. Even after having anti-virus software in the system there
exists threats from viruses as windows allows users to install software from any sources and
viruses are one of them. Mac OS is developed before Windows but didn’t get the popularity
as windows OS. Nowadays in public school in United States Macbooks are introduced such
that they can be literate about the Apple. Modern industries and some developers are now
switching towards MAC OS as they feel it is more secure in terms of virus handling
capabilities and the crashing of the programs are less frequent in MAC system. The
applications of the MAC are made to work in general the same way and thus it will be simple
to learn and then navigate throughout the system. Some people are switching towards the
Linux system to windows as the Linux is freely distributed and has good functionality,
flexibility and sturdiness. Most of the software of Linux system are virus free and the

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software are automatically updated to latest version. In future Linux has a greater chance to
be adopted globally in personal and office machines.
b) There exists many number system theoretically as any finite number can be taken as base
to represent a number. However, only four number systems namely binary, octal, decimal and
hexadecimal number systems are commonly used for their corresponding advantages.
Binary number system: This number system is developed to interact with computers or
electronic logical machines as machines can only interpret two status ON or OFF. The ON
status is binary system is 1 and the OFF status in binary system is 0. Hence, binary numbers
are only presented in 1 and 0 format and thus its base is 2. Decimal numbers which are real
numbers understood by human for their real activities can be represented in binary format
(Donzellini et al. 2019). The number 10 in decimal format is represented as ( 1010 ) 2 in binary
format.
Decimal number system: Decimal number system is the most conventional number system
and the first number system developed following the real life understanding of human beings
about the numbers. The number system has 10 digits and any number is represents as a
combination of these digits either taking one or more digits. The decimal number digits are 0,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. The negative numbers are represented by putting a negative sign(-)
in front of the number. For example, the negative of 137 is represented as – (137 )10. The
integer decimal numbers are converted to binary numbers by dividing it by 2 and arranging
them in bottom to top order in left to right.
Octal number system: Often representing numbers in binary format becomes troublesome as
only two bits are available the usual representation of the binary numbers for large decimals
becomes very large to remember. Also, in decimal number system the higher numbers like 8,
9 multiplications or additions becomes troublesome. Hence, an in between system is used in

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information technology applications to represent as well as to remember the numbers which
has 8 bits in total from 0 to 7. This particular number system is known as octal number
system and can represent three bits. Thus octal was used in operating systems of 26 and 36
bits as an abbreviation of binary because of number of bits that can be handles at once. Now,
the octal conversions are used in few places like in Unix, MAC OS where the file
permissions are restricted by octal cryptography where the support for symbols of
hexadecimal can be avoided. The octal system is also used in the digital displays where no
support for the symbols are given.
Hexadecimal number system: The hexadecimal number system is developed after the octal
number system where the base is 16 or 16 digits are used to represent a number. The digits
after 9 are represent in bold English alphabets A, B, C, D, E, F up to 15. Through hex format
4 binary bits can be processed at once. The greatest advantage of hex format is that a large
number can be represented in small bits in hex format that also can be processed quickly in
32 or 64 bit machines. Thus hex format allows to store more information in less space. The
hex representation is very fast and simple and the conversion between the hex and binary is
also fast as grouping 4 binary bits gives one hex bit and vice versa.
c)
e-commerce technology: E-commerce is basically commercial transactions that are done
online or which is whatever is sold or bought online is falls under the section e-commerce.
The first e-commerce transaction was made on 11th august 1994 by Phil Brandenberger of
Philadelphia, who used his personal credit card for purchasing a book named “ten summoners
tales” for a price of $12.48 plus shipping. This was the first purchase made using the
encryption technology for making the purchase and hence the event was considered the first
true e-commerce transaction. From its introduction e-commerce has grown significantly by

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23% in each year on average resulting an expected increase to $27 trillion by the year 2020 in
just from the retail sector. E-commerce websites can be categorized by different ways either
through products or services, by the transaction with the parties and by the platforms by
which they operate. Here, we have categorized the e-commerce websites by the product they
are selling (Kaur & Malhotra, 2016). By this category e-commerce can be of three types
namely a) e-commerce stores which sells physical goods b) service based e-commerce
websites c) digital product based e-commerce websites. Examples of e-commerce websites
are flipkart, Amazon store etc.
m-commerce technology: mobile commerce technology is a technology which supports
buying or selling goods or other things like food by using wireless devices like smartphones
or the tablets. Like e-commerce the m-commerce also gives the user to access the online
shopping platforms without using the desktop computer. The different m-commerce
platforms are in-app purchasing, virtual marketplace applications like amazon app, Apple
pay, Samsung and android pay. The delivery of the contents over time has become faster,
scalable and secure. Till 2017 the m-commerce platforms are accounted for 34.5% of the
sales of e-commerce products. Financial industries are one of the m-commerce affected areas
where mobile banking, brokerage services and dynamic stock value displays are presented in
cell-phones of users. Mobile banking is a transaction method where banking customers can
see their account status online through mobiles and can send money or pay bills through it.
Trading of shares in stock market can also performed from the cell-phones. In the
telecommunications section also m-commerce services are used as customers can change
their current service, cancel or renew from their mobiles as well as bill payments for network
usage and reviewing their corresponding account are also available. Retail and information
service are the other areas where m-commerce technology is being used in significant
amount. In retail the consumers can place or pay for their corresponding orders dynamically.

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Information services are sports news and statistics with figures delivery through online media
and traffic updates on web which can be viewed by mobile users at their free time.
Task 2: Usage of IT System and Technology
a) CPU is the brain of any computers as all the processes inside the machine are performed in
the CPU. The CPU has two primary component which are one motherboard and one
processor. For different brands of CPUs the motherboards and processors are needed to
compatible in order to the machine’s working. Intel is one of the most popular CPU brand
and its greatest competitor is AMD CPU. Intel and AMD both manufacturers desktop as well
as laptop CPU. Choosing the right CPU for desktop is often be the product which is offered at
a less price. The chips of AMD costs mostly less but performs worse for the earlier version,
however the latest versions do perform good. Buying AMD CPU always represents a great
value for money, however, in some cases costly options that Intel alternative exists. At lowest
level of scale the chips of AMD and Intel costs somewhere in between $40 to $60 for dual
core CPU with good clock speed which is energy efficient also. At the high price scale both
of the brands cost nearly $500 per chip which are very much efficient (Stegailov & Vecher,
2017). The current best processor of AMD is Ryzen 3900X with 12 cores, 24-threads with a
price of around $500. The top performance Intel processor is 9900K with eight cores and 16
threads which can be clocked at a little higher speed which is about 5 GHz boost of single
core compared to AMD 3900X’s highest clocking speed of 4.6 GHz. The price of the Intel
processor is also less at about $485. For the middle range processors the recommended Intel
chip is core i5-9400F of $160 and the Core-i7-9700K for $380. For AMD the middle range
processor 3700X is a splendid chip having eight cores and 16 threads costing of about $330.
This AMD chip is best for graphical software like games and many workloads can be taken
by the chip at the same time.

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b) An organization can be divided into three parts which are operational, middle and lower
level. At every level the requirements of information differs. There are many information
system that support every level for any organization. The well-known three information
systems are transaction processing system, management information system and decision
support system.
Transaction processing system: The transaction processing systems are mainly used for doing
day to day basis business transactions for the organizations. These are mainly used for top
operational management level. The main transaction processing objectives are to answer
some routine questions. The information which is obtained from the transaction processing
system is very much detailed. The examples of transaction processing system are point of
sale systems, Payroll systems, stock control systems, airline booking systems etc.
Management information system: The management information system is mainly used by the
tactical managers for monitoring the current performance of the organization. The output of
the transaction processing system are used in the management information system. In MIS
system the inputs are analysed with routine algorithms which are basically aggregation,
comparing and summarization of results for producing the report which tactically helps to
monitor, control and then predict the future performance. The examples of management
information system are sales management system, budgeting system and human resource
management system.
Decision Support System: The decision support systems are mainly used by the managers for
making the quick or unique decision non-routinely. The inputs to the decision support system
are transaction processing system output and the MIS system output and the output of
external system. The objectives of the decision support system is providing the solutions to
problems which change uniquely and frequently. In the decision support system sophisticated

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mathematical models are used in accordance with the statistical techniques like the
probabilistic methods, predictive modelling methods which provide the solutions
(Abualloush, Bataineh & Aladwan, 2017). The decision models are interactive and can be
given different inputs to the models to find variations in output.
Auckland Institute of Studies largest private institute in Auckland and offers various
educational courses in business, information technology, hospitality management and tourism
management. The institute uses transaction processing system to keep a record of the day to
day business transactions of new admissions or expenses of institute. It will be better for the
institute to upgrade its TPS to management information system as daily or monthly overall
transactions value will automatically calculated without human effort. The institute is not
necessarily a giant business company as they focuses on providing good educational services
to the candidates and hence no such head to head competitions are faced by AIS daily or
overall basis. Thus the business of the AIS is stable and does not require decision support
system to predict revenue or customer segmentation in a dynamic basis.
Task 3: IT system and technology evaluation
a) AIS issued e-book learning and laptops to help the students learn from online and explore
out of the box concepts relating to their studies. E-learning is advantageous as students can
access the materials whenever required and if students miss some classes then they can adjust
their understandings from the materials so that they are not left behind. Laptops are very
comfortable to carry wherever required whether to libraries or to class rooms or even in a
friend’s place. Hence, students can learn and access their books and topics from authenticated
sources at any place. This provides good benefits to students. Purchasing or downloading an
e-book or materials is just a matter of few clicks any only required to have an internet
connection whether broadband or via modem to the laptop. Also, searching for a particular

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book is very easy as this is unlike conventional book buying where people need to visit
different bookshops physically to find a particular book. Only the student needs to pay the
price online through credit /debit/net banking method and student can instantly download the
whole book with all pages. In case of free book or lecture notes this is really easy as student
can directly download the book. After download is completed the book can be accessed
anytime without requiring the internet connection. Furthermore, student can printout
important pages of the book whenever required or can read if the laptop gets damaged
somehow. E-books are designed in way such that they have more learning style as often
video and animations are used to describe the concepts in the book. Also, videos has subtitles
as well as narrators and hence it becomes so simple that students often study from those
instead of books. Searching through E-books are the best parts as most of the e-books are in
pdf format and but just typing the keyword/s and pressing enter gives the desired page in
which the concept has been described. The size of the E-books are usually in Mb and hence
students do not need extra hard drive space in their laptops to store the e-books. Although, e-
leaning and e-books are future learning trend, it has some minor disadvantage like the
excessive reading from the E-books can cause problems in eyes, back pain or students can be
diverted from the topic while surfing through different videos of the contents online. For,
example searching YouTube for a concept can give several suggestions but not all are leading
to exact topic.
b) A network printer is a particular printer usually of large size which can be access by all
people or devices connected to the network and anyone can be print their documents using it.
Now, AIS has developed a network printer which connects all the systems which are logged
on and connected to the network of the institute and hence student using laptop and logged in
to AIS network can print their documents through it. The network printer is best to connect
wirelessly as all the laptops of the students are wirelessly connected. Network printers are

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flexible and efficient to the employees in the office and offered in various forms like laser,
thermal, inkjet forms. These printers are supported in every platform like Windows, Mac and
Linux environment and hence independent of the operating system in student’s laptop the
network printer can be accessed (Müller et al. 2017). The network printers saves the money
of AIS in numerous way as for every student or employee a printer is not needed. This
reduces the maintenance cost also as yearly servicing of just one network printer is needed.
The tracking of which students or employees using or used the printer is possible and hence
restriction to unauthorized usage of the printer can be set up by the institute. The only
disadvantage of the network printer is that as multiple users can access the printer at the same
time, hence, the usage of the printer takes time and some students need to wait until the
previous printing is completed. Also, there is a chance of jamming the network with heavy
traffic if too many students opt for printing at the same time, which is common during pre-
exam times.
c) Both MySQL and MongoDB are relational database management system which helps to
manage the database of a company. MySQL is open sourced or can be availed by anyone as
free like MongoDB, which is a cross-platform document oriented programming for database.
The best advantage of MongoDB is that there exists no restrictions on the schema design.
Hence, any number of documents can be added to MongoDB without worrying about relation
between them. MySQL has the disadvantage of storing data in proper manner i.e. in MySQL
every tables and columns are needed to be defined properly and every row in table need to
have the same column before storing any data (Győrödi et al. 2015). The maintenance cost of
the database built using MySQL is less comparative to MongoDB which is recommend for
high data availability, automatic and instant recovery of data. Now, as AIS has been just
started online learning and network printer it is recommended that to use MySQL for
database management as the initial data will not be large and costing for maintenance is

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reduced. MySQL is limited for high performance solutions in limited budget whereas
MongoDB offers enhanced performance for large databases which included inbuilt sharding
solution. AIS is not going change its data structure of the current database in future and hence
for fixed schema SQL is recommended. MongoDB is required where the schema is unstable
and for reduced cost of migration. AIS mostly require high rate of transactions typically by
the rate of 30000 inserts in a minute as it is likely that many students are opting for the
printing service simultaneously. Thus for this feature also MySQL is the recommended
database management system for AIS as through MySQL data can be transacted in a very
high rate.

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Donzellini, G., Oneto, L., Ponta, D., & Anguita, D. (2019). Numeral systems and binary
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Kaur, R., & Malhotra, H. (2016). SWOT analysis of m-commerce. In Securing transactions
and payment systems for m-commerce (pp. 48-67). IGI Global.
Stegailov, V., & Vecher, V. (2017, September). Efficiency analysis of Intel and AMD
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IEEE.
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