I am doing a research paper for a class im taking & need more information on Application Software?

Answer 1

Software generally falls into two categories - system software and application software. System software includes your various operating systems - Windows, Mac, UNIX, Linux, DOS, etc. Application software includes pretty much everything else you can think of - Doom 3, Quicken, Internet Explorer, PowerPoint, etc.

You can categorize application software by their function - there are business applications (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, for example), financial applications (Quicken, Peachtree), entertainment applications (Doom 3, Lego Star Wars), or multimedia applications (Windows Media Player, Adobe Premiere). These categorizations are not an industry standard kind of thing, but more of a generally accepted thing - if you go to Best Buy or Circuit City or Amazon.com, you'll generally have the same categories for software. The names might be slightly different, but the idea is the same.

You may also run into programs that fit multiple categories. Outlook, for example, is a business application, a personal information management application, and a communications application. Where companies choose to categorize that is purely up to them.

Hopefully this gets you started - post more if you need anything specific.