1.2 System Software

Describe the characteristics of different types of operating systems and their uses:

• Batch
• A Batch OS is operating system which analyzes your input into the system and then groups them into batch's according to different characteristics e.g. Printing Power Bills.
• Real-time
• A real-time operating system (RTOS) is an operating system intended to serve real-time application requests and process them straight away e.g POS (Point of Sale).
• Single-user, Single-task
• Single-user operating systems are designed to manage the computer so that one user can effectively and effiently do one thing at a time e.g The Palm OS for Palm handheld computers.
• Single-user, Multi-task
• Similar to above but the single user can do multiple tasks at a time.
• Multi-user
• Multi-user operating systems allows many different users to take use the computer's resources, programs, printers etc. simultaneously.