Any machine that feeds data into a computer.

For example, a keyboard

is an input device. Input devices other than the keyboard are sometimes
called alternate input devices. Mice, trackballs, and light pens are all
alternate input devices.

Digital camera:
A type of camera that stores the
pictures or video it takes in electronic format instead of to film. There are
several features that make digital cameras a popular choice when compared to
film cameras. First, the feature often enjoyed the most is the LCD display on the
digital camera. This display allows users to view photos or video after the picture
or video has been taken, which means if you take a picture and don't like the
results, you can delete it; or if you do like the picture, you can easily show it to
other people

Mouse:
A hardware input device that was invented by Douglas
Engelbart in 1963, who at the time was working at the Stanford Research
Institute, which was a think tank sponsored by Stanford University. The mouse
allows an individual to control a pointer in a graphical user interface (GUI).
Utilizing a mouse a user has the ability to perform various functions such as
opening a program or file and does not require the user to memorize commands

Joystick:
A peripheral input device that looks similar to a control
device you would find on an arcade game at your local arcades. A computer
joystick allows an individual to easily navigate an object in a game such as
navigating a plane in a flight simulator.

Optical scanner:
Hardware input device that allows
a user to take an image and/or text and convert it into a digital file, allowing the
computer to read and/or display the scanned object. A scanner is commonly
connected to a computer USB, Firewire, Parallel or SCSI port.

Webcam:
A camera connected to a computer or server that
allows anyone connected to the Internet to view still pictures or motion video of
a user. The majority of webcam web sites are still pictures that are frequently
refreshed every few seconds, minutes, hours, or days.

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Touch Screen:
A touch screen is a
computer screen or other screen that you can touch with your finger to
enter information. Examples of touch screens include a smart board, a
microwave, a dishwasher, or an ATM at a bank.

Light Pen:
The tip of the light pen contains a
light-sensitive element which, when placed against the screen, detects
the light from the screen enabling the computer to identify the location
of the pen on the screen. Light pens have the advantage of 'drawing'
directly onto the screen, but this can become uncomfortable, light Pen is
a pointing device shaped like a pen and is connected to a VDU and they
are not as accurate as digitising tablets

Scanners:
Scanners allow information such as a photo or
text to be input into a computer. Scanners are usually either A4 size
(flatbed), as shown below, or hand-held to scan a much smaller area. If
text is to be scanned, you would use an Optical Character Recognition
(OCR) program to recognise the printed text and then convert it to a
digital text file that can be accessed using a computer

Bar Code Reader:

A bar code scanner scans a
little label that has a bar code on it. The information is then saved on the
computer. Bar code scanners are used in libraries a lot.

Microphone:
A microphone is used to
record sound. The sound is then saved as a sound file on the computer

Drawing Tablet:
A drawing tablet is similar to a
white board, except you use a special pen to write on it and it's connected to the
computer. Then the word or image you draw can be saved on the computer.

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Any device that outputs information from a computer is called, not surprisingly,
an output devices

Printers:
You can print out information that is in the computer
onto paper. By printing you create what is known as a 'hard copy'.
There are different kinds of printers which vary in their speed and print quality.
The two main types of printer are impact and non-impact
 Impact Printer
Impact Printers use a print head containing a number of
metal pins which strike an inked ribbon placed between the print head and the
paper.
 Non-Impact Printers
Non-impact printers are much quieter than
impact printers as their printing heads do not strike the paper.
Most non-impact printers produce dot-matrix patterns.
Several different technologies have been used to provide a variety of printers.

The main types of non-impact printer are:

 Thermal Printer
 Laser Printer
 Ink Jet Printer

Plotters:
Plotters are used to produce graphs or diagrams.
Plotters can be of two types:

Pen plotters
Electrostatic plotters

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 Pen plotters have an ink pen attached to draw the images, and
electrostatic plotters work similarly to a laser printer

Monitor:
A monitor is the screen on which words,
numbers, and graphics can be seem. The monitor is the most common output
device.

Compact Disk:
Some compact disks can
be used to put information on. This is called burning information to a CD.
NOTE: A CD can also be an input device.

Speaker:
Speaker is also part of out put devices .A speaker gives
you sound output from your computer. A large number of varieties of speakers
available in the market. And which capable good quality of sound . Some
speakers are built into the computer and some are separate.

Headphones:
Headphones give sound output from the
computer. They are similar to speakers, except they are worn on the ears so
only one person can hear the output at a time.

FLAT PANEL MONITORS:

Laptop PCs use
space saving flat-panel monitors some less than ½ inches thick. Flat panel
monitors use a variety of technologies ,the most common being liquid crystal
display (LCD). LCD monitors are active matrix or passive matrix

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 In many cases the information that has been processed is stored in machine-
readable format so that it may be accessed at a later time by a computer. This
data is stored in binary form in 'bits'.
This practice requires the use of storage devices.

Hard Disk:
The hard disk is direct-access storage medium with a rigid magnetic disk.
The data is stored as magnetised spots arranged in concentric circles (tracks) on
the disk.
Each track is divided into sectors.
The number of tracks and sectors on a disk is known as its 'format'.
The hard disk is a direct-access storage medium with a rigid magnetic disk.
The data is stored as magnetised spots arranged in concentric circles (tracks) on
the disk.
Each track is divided into sectors.
The number of tracks and sectors on a disk is known as its 'format'.

High data rates demand that the disk rotates at a high speed (about 3,600 rpm).
As the disk rotates read/write heads move to the correct track.

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The disk is sealed and lubricated and the head hovers on a cushion of air just
above the disk to avoid damage. These are therefore called floating heads.
The storage capacity of a hard disk can be Gigabytes (Gb), i.e. thousands of
Megabytes (1000Mb), of information

Mag
netic Tape:
A recording medium consisting of a
thin tape with a coating of a fine magnetic material, used for recording analogue
or digital data. Data is stored in frames across the width of the tape. The frames
are grouped into blocks or records which are separated from other blocks by
gaps.
Magnetic tape is a serial access medium, similar to an audio cassette, and so
data (like the songs on a music tape) cannot be quickly located.

However large amounts of information can be stored within magnetic tape. This
characteristic has prompted its use in the regular backing up of hard disks.

Floppy Disk:
A floppy disk is a thin magnetic-coated disk
contained in a flexible or semi-rigid protective
jacket.
Data is stored in tracks and sectors.
The floppy disks are usually 3.5" in size.
However, older floppy disks may be in use; these
would be 5.25" in size.
Double sided high density 3.5" disks can hold 1.44
Mb of data.

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Once data is stored on a floppy disk it can be 'write protected' by clicking a tab
on the disk. This prevents any new data being stored or any old data being

erased. Optical
Disk:
An optical disk is impressed with a series of
spiral pits in a flat surface.
A master disk is burnt by high-intensity laser beams in bit-patterns from which
subsequent copies are formed which can be read optically by laser.

A CD-ROM
The optical disk is a random access storage medium; information can be easily
read from any point on the disk. A standard CD-ROM can store up to 650Mb of
data, with 14,500 tracks per inch (tpi).
CD-ROM stands for Compact Disk - Read Only Memory. It is now possible to have
CD-ROMs where extra tracks of information can be written onto them by the
user. These are called read/writable CD-ROMs and these are becoming a popular
and cheap method for storage.

Usb flash drive:

a USB flash drive is a NAND type flash
memory data storage device integrated with a USB 1.1 or 2.0 interface. it is
small, lightweight, removable and rewritable. the most economical drives in
terms of cost per unit of storage space are in the range of 512 megabytes 2
gigabytes, with cost megabyte increasing as one moves outside that range.

CD-ROM:
With optical laser dish technology the read /write two
lasers replace head used in magnetic storage. One laser beam writes on the
recording surface by scoring microscopic pots n the disk and another laser reads
the data from the lights sensitive recording surface. A light beam is easily

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deflected to the desired place on the optical disk so a mechanical access arm is

not needed. CD-ROM stands for compact disk read only memory. The name
implies its application .once inserted into the CD-ROM drive the text video
images and so on can be read into RAM for processing or display.