Computer Awareness Mixed Quiz: Set 7

The correct answer is B, Impact. A daisy wheel printer prints by striking the paper, so it is an impact printer. It carries a flat wheel with spokes, each spoke ending in a moulded letter or figure, and the wheel looks like the petals of a daisy, which gives it its name. A hammer hits the chosen petal against an inked ribbon and presses the character onto the paper, exactly as a typewriter does. It gives clean letter quality text but is noisy, slow and cannot draw pictures. Option A is wrong because non impact printers such as inkjet, laser and thermal printers never touch the paper with a type element. Option C is wrong because a laser printer forms the image with a laser beam and toner powder, without any striking. Option D is wrong because a daisy wheel is a character printer, printing one character at a time, while a line printer prints a whole line. Exam tip: impact printers are dot matrix, daisy wheel, drum and chain.

The correct answer is D, Shift + Space. Pressing Shift together with the spacebar selects the whole row that holds the active cell, from column A right across to the last column of the grid. The row number on the left turns highlighted, and any formatting, deletion or height change you apply next affects the entire row.

Option A, Ctrl + Shift + Space, selects the whole worksheet, which is the same thing Ctrl + A does when the active cell stands outside a data range. Option B, Ctrl + Home, does not select anything at all; it only moves the cursor back to cell A1 from wherever it happens to be. Option C, Ctrl + Space, is the companion of the right answer and selects the whole column instead of the whole row, which is exactly the swap the paper setter is hoping for. Remember the pair together: Shift for the row, Ctrl for the column.

The correct answer is C, 1024 kilobyte. Computer memory is counted in powers of two because a binary machine addresses memory in twos, so each step up the ladder is 1024 of the unit below it, not 1000. One byte is 8 bits, 1024 bytes make a kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes make a megabyte, 1024 megabytes make a gigabyte and 1024 gigabytes make a terabyte, which is then followed by the petabyte, exabyte, zettabyte and yottabyte. So a megabyte is 1024 kilobytes, or 1048576 bytes. Option A is wrong because 1024 gigabytes make a terabyte, a unit far larger than a megabyte. Option B is wrong because 1000 bytes is roughly a kilobyte, and even that is only the decimal approximation. Option D is wrong because 1024 terabytes make a petabyte. Exam tip: the ladder is bit, byte, KB, MB, GB, TB, PB, and each step is 1024, that is 2 to the power 10.

The correct answer is B, Drupal. Drupal is a content management system, a free program used to build and run websites; it keeps its pages in a database but is not itself a database management system. A DBMS is the software layer that creates, stores, queries and secures data, and the other three names are all DBMS products. Option A, Oracle, is the commercial relational database widely used by banks and large businesses. Option C, MySQL, is the open source relational database that a large share of the web runs on; Drupal and WordPress in fact store their content in a MySQL database, which shows the difference between the two kinds of software. Option D, MS Access, is the small desktop database that ships with Microsoft Office and keeps tables, queries, forms and reports in a single file. Exam tip: Oracle, MySQL, MS Access, SQL Server and PostgreSQL are database managers; Drupal, Joomla and WordPress are content management systems.

The correct answer is C, .docx. From Word 2007 onwards a document is saved by default in the Office Open XML format, whose extension is .docx. The format stores the document as compressed XML parts, which makes the file smaller and easier for a damaged file to be recovered from than the older binary format.

Option A, .doc, was the default extension up to Word 2003 and is still offered in the Save As list for users who must share a file with a very old version, but it is no longer the default. Option B, .txt, is a plain text file that keeps no formatting at all, no fonts, no tables and no pictures, so Word only produces it when the user asks for it. Option D, .dotx, is the extension of a Word template, the ready made pattern from which new documents are created, and not of an ordinary document.

The correct answer is D, All of the above. A high-level language is written in words close to English and has to be turned into machine code by a compiler or an interpreter, so the programmer need not know the processor at all. All three named languages are of this kind. COBOL, from 1959, was built for business data processing and Grace Hopper was central to its design. PASCAL, designed by Niklaus Wirth around 1970 and named after Blaise Pascal, was made for teaching structured programming. BASIC, written by Kemeny and Kurtz in 1964, was the beginners language of early home computers. Options A, B and C are each individually correct but incomplete, and the question asks for the choice that covers every high-level language listed, so the fuller option D is the right one. Exam tip: machine and assembly language are low level, C, COBOL, BASIC, PASCAL, FORTRAN and Java are high level.

The correct answer is A, Title bar. The title bar is the strip along the very top of the Excel window, and it carries the name of the open workbook followed by the name of the program, for example Book1 - Excel. The minimise, maximise and close buttons sit at its right end, and the Quick Access Toolbar at its left.

Option B, the tool bar, holds command buttons rather than names; in Excel 2007 and later it survives only as the small Quick Access Toolbar. Option C, the task bar, belongs to the Windows operating system and not to Excel; it runs along the bottom of the screen and shows the Start button and the programs that are open. Option D, the menu bar, was the row of word menus of Excel 2003 and earlier, replaced by the ribbon from Excel 2007; it listed commands such as File and Edit, never the file name. The cell address, by contrast, is shown in the Name Box beside the formula bar.

The correct answer is D, Virtualization. Virtualization creates a software layer over the physical processor, memory and storage of a machine, so that one server can be divided into several virtual machines, each running its own operating system as though it had hardware of its own. The program that makes this possible is the hypervisor. Because a single strong server then does the work of many lightly used ones, organisations buy less hardware and spend less on power, cooling and floor space, which is why it is called the most effective way to cut IT costs. It is also the base on which cloud computing is built. Option A is wrong because artificial intelligence is about machines doing tasks that need human-like reasoning. Option B is wrong because clustering joins several computers to work as one for speed and reliability, not to abstract resources. Option C is wrong because a storage area network is a dedicated network for storage alone. Exam tip: hypervisor runs virtual machines, and virtualization underlies cloud computing.

The correct answer is B, Proxy Firewall. A proxy firewall, also called an application gateway, stands between the client and the server as a stand-in for both, opens each message and filters it at the application layer, so it can read a URL, a command or an attachment before passing the request on. Because it must understand the protocol it guards, a separate proxy is written for each service, and HTTP, FTP and SMTP proxies are the common ones. Option A, the packet filter firewall, reads only the IP header and the port number at the network and transport layers and cannot see what a message contains. Option C, the stateful inspection firewall, goes a step further by tracking the state of every connection, but it still works at the transport layer. Option D, the next-generation firewall, is a product category that bundles several of these techniques rather than the classical firewall defined by application layer filtering. Exam tip: a packet filter reads headers, a proxy reads the message itself.

The correct answer is D, Ministry of Education. The National Digital Library of India is a single window that brings together lakhs of learning resources, from school books to research papers, and lets a student search them free of cost in many Indian languages. It is developed by IIT Kharagpur under the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology, a mission of the Ministry of Education; the ministry was called the Ministry of Human Resource Development when the library was launched and was renamed in 2020. Option A is wrong because the Ministry of Finance handles the budget, taxes and public spending, not education platforms. Option B is wrong because India has no ministry of that name; Science and Technology is a separate ministry of its own. Option C is wrong because the electronics and information technology ministry runs Digital India, e-governance services and BharatNet, but not this library. Exam tip: National Digital Library of India means IIT Kharagpur, the NMEICT mission and the Ministry of Education.

The correct answer is D, Java. Java is an object-oriented programming language, so it is the right pick for Preet. It was created by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995; every piece of code sits inside a class, and the language is built on the four pillars of object orientation — encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism and abstraction. Java source is compiled into bytecode that any Java Virtual Machine can run, which is why it is described as write once, run anywhere. Option B is wrong because Pascal, written by Niklaus Wirth in 1970 for teaching, is a structured procedural language; only the later Object Pascal added classes. Option A is wrong for the same reason, since it offers Pascal as an equal choice. Option C is wrong because BASIC, made by Kemeny and Kurtz in 1964, is a simple procedural language for beginners. Exam tip: C++, Java, Python, C# and Smalltalk are object-oriented, while C, Pascal, FORTRAN, COBOL and BASIC are procedural.

The correct answer is C, Ctrl + tab. In Google Chrome, holding Control and pressing Tab moves to the next open tab on the right, and the pair Control, Shift and Tab moves back to the previous one. Chrome also lets a tab be opened with Control and T, closed with Control and W, and the last closed tab reopened with Control, Shift and T, while Control with a number from 1 to 8 jumps straight to that tab. Option A is wrong because Alt and Tab is a Windows shortcut that switches between open programs, not between tabs inside the browser. Option B is wrong because Shift, Control and Alt together are only modifier keys and do nothing on their own. Option D is wrong because Control, Alt and Delete opens the Windows security screen from which the Task Manager can be started. Exam tip: Ctrl + Tab next tab, Ctrl + T new tab, Ctrl + W close tab.

The correct answer is A, F1. F1 is the function key that opens Help in Windows and in almost every Microsoft Office program, which is why it is the first key on the row. The twelve function keys F1 to F12 sit along the top of the keyboard and each carries a standard job. F2 renames a selected file in Windows Explorer and moves the cursor into the edit line in Excel. F3 opens the search or find box in Explorer and in most browsers. F4 repeats the last action in Word and switches a cell reference between absolute and relative in Excel, while Alt + F4 closes the active window. F5 refreshes a web page and starts a slide show in PowerPoint. F7 runs the spelling and grammar check in Word. Options B, C and D are wrong because F2, F4 and F3 do the jobs described above and none of them opens Help. Exam tip: F1 Help, F2 rename, F3 search, F5 refresh, F7 spell check, F12 Save As.

The correct answer is B, 11. A new blank document in Microsoft Word 2016 opens in the Calibri font at a size of 11 points, and the same pair of defaults is used from Word 2007 through Word 2019. The setting can be seen in the Font group of the Home tab the moment a new document is created, and it can be altered for every future document through the Font dialog box by choosing the font and the size and then clicking Set As Default.

Option A, 10 points, is not the default of any Word version in common use. Option C, 12 points, is the size many offices and universities insist on for a printed report, and it was the default size of the older Times New Roman default in Word 2003, which is why it is the favourite distractor here. Option D, 14 points, is a heading size a user applies by hand and is never the default body size.

The correct answer is B, Platform as a Service. Cloud computing is sold in three service models, and PaaS is the middle one. A PaaS provider hands the developer a ready platform — the operating system, a runtime, a database, libraries and build tools — so an application can be written and deployed without buying or managing any hardware or patching an operating system. Google App Engine, Microsoft Azure App Service, Red Hat OpenShift and Heroku are examples. Below it, IaaS supplies raw computing power and storage, such as Amazon EC2, and the user still installs the software. Above it, SaaS delivers finished software over the browser, such as Gmail or Google Docs. The three main deployment models are public, private and hybrid cloud. Options A, C and D are wrong because Payment as a Service, Performance as a Service and Protocol as a Service are not cloud service models. Exam tip: IaaS gives the machine, PaaS the platform, SaaS the finished software.

The correct answer is C, Ctrl + M. In Microsoft PowerPoint, pressing Ctrl + M adds a new slide right after the one you are on, using the layout of the current slide. Think of M for 'more slides', which makes it easy to recall. Other shortcuts worth knowing in PowerPoint are F5 to start the show from the first slide, Shift + F5 to start from the current slide, Esc to end the show, and Ctrl + S to save. Option A is wrong because Ctrl + N opens a brand new blank presentation, not a slide. Option B is wrong because Ctrl + D duplicates the slide that is selected, copying its content as well. Option D is wrong because Ctrl + I turns the selected text italic, just as it does in Word and Excel. Exam tip: Ctrl + M new slide, Ctrl + D duplicate slide, Ctrl + N new file, F5 to run the slide show.

The correct answer is D, the operating system will return an error indicating that the directory is not empty. The plain remove-directory command is built to delete an empty folder only. In Windows it is rmdir, also written rd, and in Linux it is rmdir; both stop with a message such as "The directory is not empty" when anything is still inside. To remove a folder along with everything in it you have to ask for it: rmdir /s in Windows or rm -r in Linux, which walks through the tree, deletes the contents and then the folder. This guard exists so that a single short command cannot wipe out a large tree by mistake. Option A is wrong because nothing inside is touched without the recursive switch. Option B is wrong because a file system cannot leave files with no parent folder; the entries go together or not at all. Option C is wrong because the plain command does not ask item by item, which is what an interactive option like rm -i does. Exam tip: rmdir empties only, rm -r for the whole tree.

The correct answer is D, Output devices. A computer works on binary digital signals, and an output device turns the processed result into a form a person can see, hear or hold: a monitor shows it as a picture, a printer puts it on paper, a speaker turns it into sound and a plotter draws it. That is why the monitor and printer are the two output devices named in every syllabus. Option A is wrong because storage devices such as a hard disk, SSD or pen drive only hold data for later use; they do not present it to the user. Option B is wrong because a keyboard is an input device, and it does the opposite job, turning key presses into signals for the machine. Option C is wrong for the same reason: input devices such as the mouse, scanner and microphone feed data in. Exam tip: monitor and printer are output, keyboard and mouse are input, a touch screen is both.

The correct answer is A, Access. DASD stands for Direct Access Storage Device. It is any storage device on which the read-write head can be sent straight to the place where a record is kept, so a file can be reached without passing over everything stored before it. Hard disk drives, floppy disks, CDs, DVDs and drums are direct access devices, and the term was coined by IBM for the disk units of its mainframes. The opposite is SASD, a sequential access storage device such as magnetic tape, where the tape must be wound past every earlier record. Direct access is what makes random reads and updates possible, which is why databases sit on disks and not on tape. Options B, C and D are wrong because Around, Accessible and Arithmetic do not appear in the expansion; Arithmetic belongs to ALU, the arithmetic logic unit of the CPU. Exam tip: DASD is disk and direct, SASD is tape and sequential.

The correct answer is D, Mailings. The Mailings tab holds Start Mail Merge, Select Recipients, Insert Merge Field, Preview Results and Finish and Merge, along with the Envelopes and Labels commands. A mail merge joins a main document, which carries the matter common to everyone, with a data source, which carries the list of names and addresses, and prints one personalised copy for each record.

Option A, the Insert tab, is used for pages, tables, pictures, links, headers, footers and symbols. Option B, the References tab, is used for a table of contents, footnotes, endnotes, captions, citations and an index. Option C, the Review tab, is used for the spelling and grammar check, the thesaurus, word count, comments and track changes. None of these three contains the merge commands.