I'm doing research for a project and am having a hard time nailing this one down. On that same note, what is a panel in the electrical engineering realm?
Hardware is everything that is not the electricity itself, or what the electricity represents. In a computer, the hardware is the resistors, capacitors, wires and transistors all connected into a circuit. After accounting for all this, it leaves the electrons themselves traveling through the circuit. In terms of plumbing, it is the difference between the pipe and the water the pipes contain. The information is known as software. This is a series of electrical pulses generated at a precise rate. A beat can contain electrons or lack them. A series of beats is what forms the software code which determines how the computer functions. A panel is a flat surface which typically serves as an interface. An interface is a communication system set up to allow people control electronic devices. Panels traditionally contained contact switches or buttons. These influenced how the device operated. Without the interface, the user would have to disconnect and reconnect the circuits by hand. Computers use panels called GUI's. This is a graphical user interface. Microsoft windows is the best example. The software is represented by a series of small pictures and a special pointing device is used to start the software running. before GUI's, computer users had to type individual commands using another panel interface - the computer keyboard. Now keyboards are used mostly for work processing.
Well, often Hardware and Software are used to distinguish between those who design circuits and those who write code. This distinction is necessary because many colleges still include both hardware and software as Electrical Engineering degrees. In a more concrete sense, hardware is the wires, IC's resistors, capacitors, etc. that make up a circuit. The only applicable meaning of Panel I can think of is a distribution panel, which is a box of fuses or circuit-breakers (like the fuse box in your basement).
Hardware refers to all of the physical electronics. Anything that you can touch is part of the hardware. For comparison software then refers to the information and instructions that are programmed into that hardware. Since this doesn't have a physical existence it is softer than the hardware. There is also firmware, this is the part of the software that is very closely related to the physical hardware and is needed to make it work. So hardware would be all of the electronics inside your computer. Software would be windows, your web browser, anything running on your computer. Firmware would be the device drivers and the computers BIOS, the bits of the software which depend on the details of your hardware. A panel would normally mean the controls on the front of a piece of equipment. Sometimes you distinguish the front panel from the back panel, the front being the day to day user interface and the back being the connection to and from other things that you don't often change. A panel can also refer to a set of printed circuit boards (the normally green board that electrical parts are attached to) during their manufacturing process but that is a fairly specialized area and probably isn't the meaning you are after.
Usually, 'hardware' refers to the physical unit. Something you can hold in your hand. It would be run or be operated with 'software'. 'panel' usually refers to the front or back - the part that probably has the switches, lights and buttons.
Hardware: The definition in the first link below is correct by me. the physical artifacts of a technology. So it is all the bits and pieces, transformers, insulators etc. that you would find in an electrical shop, or electrical company's store. Electrical Panel An Electrical Panel is talking of switch board panels in one sense. See the carebase link below. The thing in the picture, for example, mounts in a larger cabinet. They are standardised in dimensions. However electrical panels includes all sorts of things that mount in what I call equipment housings. Search Google images electrical panel and you will get the idea. Anything that mounts electrical stuff on it, ready to go in a box. Service panels is a term now used for household fuse box etc. in the US it seems. These are meter boxes, switchboards, fuse boxes, distribution panel to me, though I have seen service panels as an architect's term. It can apply to things like network cabling panels too. I should mention control panels, intended for operators to interact with the system. The meaning of electrical panel depends on context and regional language.
