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Hardware is the physical part of a computer. It is what you can touch—any part of the computer you can see or feel is hardware.
Software is the instructions that makeup computer programs. In a modern computer, programs may be stored long-term on a hard disk or in Random Access Memory (RAM) when the computer is running such programs.
Read Only Memory (ROM) doesn't lose information when the computer is turned off. The programming is permanently stored with a particular piece of ROM. Since ROM is hardware that has software permanently stored in it, ROM is often called "firmware" (hardware and software at the same time). In modern usage, firmware means the software that operates a particular machine. A digital camera has firmware stored in ROM that runs that camera. A computer has firmware stored in the ROM BIOS that starts the computer (the operating system and other programs are then loaded from the hard disk to RAM). Today, firmware is usually stored in flash memory. Flash memory, like ROM, doesn't lose its information when the power is removed but, like RAM, can be changed.
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