It is believed that the first computer of the world was invented between the tear of 1940 and 1950. The first computer was so big that it filled up an entire room. But gradually technology advanced and the big became small. The entire vogue of the big went out of line and computer began to shrink. Today the smallest computer can fit on the palm of a man and that it is a thousand times more advanced and sophisticated than the first generation computer.

A computer is made up of hardware and the software. Hardware is the physical objects that make up the computer. The software is what binds the hardware together and helps in making the computer run according to our will. Now there is much important software to run the computer properly. In fact software can be classified into two types- the system software and application software. System software is the software designed to operate the different computer hardware and builds the platform on which the application software can run. The computer bios and the different types of operating systems like Windows, Mac, Linux, etc are examples of system software. Application software on the other hand is software designed specifically to perform specific functions. They depend on the system software to run. Actually this application software is built to perform tasks which the system software cannot perform. Microsoft office, Tally, etc are some examples of application software. Now coming back to operating systems, these help in running of the computer and interpret the signals given by man into machine language and thus the computer knows what the user wants it to perform. A task manager is one such program written within the operating system which gives the user information about what programs are running on the computer, as well as the general information about the computer, such as, CPU usage, memory usage, networking status, the applications running. It is used to terminate a thread or a process as well as change the process priority.

The task manager shortcut used in Windows series of operating system is by pressing the buttons Control-Alt-Delete. But task manager shortcut varies from one operating system to another. Linux has different task manager shortcut to open the task manager. Task manager is one important program of the computer and hence a person must know how to open it using the minimum number of key strokes. One can know how to use the shortcuts by searching on the internet.