While many computer junkies would rarely mention terms like routers or bridges, they would throw words like 'hardware' and 'software' at you all the time. So read on to find out what they mean in order to not feel all that lost when you are surrounded by those who practically eat, sleep and drink computers. You must have seen a computer system, all the tangible parts of a computer come under the category of 'hardware'. Everything from that screen you see, which is called a monitor by the way, and CPU to keyboard and mouse are known as 'hardware'. In even simpler terms, everything that you can actually see and touch is called a hardware, provided it is attached to a computer system.
Software is a program or an application that users run on their systems to perform various tasks.
For example MS Word, or Internet Explorer or any other program that is present on the system is categorized as software. Without a software, a computer system is nothing but an empty box. We require software to various purposes, either for document writing or to make worksheets or to even to produce graphical images. So the moment your system is turned on, the control lies in the hands of different programs that were written in order to make a computer system work. It is a kind of software.