OUTPUT DEVICES

Presented by Ms. Simmonds

What is an output Device?

Any piece of computer equipment used to communicate the results of data processing carried out by an information processing system to the outside world.

Categories of Output Devices

Hard Copy Output Device Soft Copy Output Device

Output devices are grouped based on how it return the output to its user.

Types of Hard Copy Output Devices

Plotter Printer

Plotters
A device that draws pictures on paper based on commands from a computer. Plotters differ from printers in that they draw lines using a pen. As a result, they can produce continuous lines, whereas printers can only simulate lines by printing a closely spaced series of dots.

Plotter

Plotter contd

Flat Bed Plotter

This type of printer is used more in industry to produce large drawings or posters. They consist of several pens, which move backwards and forwards across the paper, dropping down on to the paper when it is needed. The paper on this type shown uses the pens to move across the paper. This type of plotter can produce only the colours you decide to put in the ink cartridges. Printing can be expensive if you make a mistake on a large piece of paper.

Flat Bed Plotter

Advantage
Large posters can be produced

Disadvantage
Printing can be very time consuming and costly. Need large storage area. (The size of the plotter is big and you need a lot of room for it.)

Drum plotter
This plotter allows the paper to move whilst the pens only move backwards and forwards. This type of printer is an impact printer and the pens need to touch the paper.

Advantage
They dont take up as much space as a flat bed plotter, they can produce varying sizes of prints.

Disadvantage
Very expensive to use and generally only seen in big work places for design.

Drum Plotter

Types of Printers
Impact Non-Impact

Impact Printers
Impact printer touches the printing material while producing the output.

Types of Impact Printers

Dot-Matrix Chain Line

Dot-Matrix
An impact printer that produces text and graphics when tiny wire pins on the print head strike the ink ribbon. The print head runs back and forth on the paper like a typewriter. When the ink ribbon presses on the paper, it creates dots that form text and images. Higher number of pins means that the printer prints more dots per character, thus resulting in higher print quality.

Dot- Matrix
This type of printer is mainly used in companies where they would require carbon copy of work doing. The amount of pressure on the paper by the printing head is enough to go through the different amount of paper. The printer produces characters made up of dots using a 9, 18 or 24 pin print head.

Dot-Matrix

Advantages
Can print on multi-part forms or carbon copies Low printing cost per page Can be used on continuous form paper, useful for data logging Reliable, durable

Disadvantages
Noisy Limited print quality Low printing speed Limited color printing

Chain Printer
An early line printer that used type slugs linked together in a chain as its printing mechanism. The chain spins horizontally around a set of hammers. When the desired character is in front of the selected print column, the corresponding hammer hits the paper into the ribbon and onto the character in the chain.

Chain printer mechanism

When the required character in the chain has revolved to the selected print column, the hammer pushes the paper into the ribbon and against the type slug of the letter or digit.

Line Printer
A high-speed printer capable of printing an entire line at one time. A fast line printer can print as many as 3,000 lines per minute.

Line Printer

Disadvantage
Cannot print graphics the print quality is low they are very noisy.

Non-Impact Printer
Prints text and images by spraying tiny droplets of liquid ink onto paper. They are the most popular printers for home use.

Types of Non-Impact
Ink-jet Thermal Laser

Ink-Jet
Prints text and images by spraying tiny droplets of liquid ink onto paper. They are the most popular printers for home use.

Inkjet Printer

Ink-Jet Printer

Advantage
Colour printing available Convenient for small documents Very high quality colour prints, useful or brochures and posters etc. Companies sometimes have a single colour printer unless they are doing lots of design work for customers.

Disadvantage
Expensive to run Simplex (single sided) printing only Slow printing. 2 pages per minute may be slower if the picture or graphic is in very high detail.

Thermal Printers
A thermal print head applies heat to a heatsensitive ribbon, which melts ink onto paper and a wide range of materials to form text and images. The printouts can be extremely durable and can be stored over long period of time. Thermal paper is paper that is impregnated with a chemical that changes color when exposed to heat. It is used in thermal printers and particularly in cheap, lightweight devices such as adding machines, cash registers, and credit card terminals.

Thermal Printer

Thermal Printer

Advantages
Low cost High quality of output, capable of printing fine and smooth details Capable of printing in vivid color, good for printing pictures Easy to use Reasonably fast Quieter than dot matrix printer No warm up time

Disadvantages
Print head is less durable, prone to clogging and damage Expensive replacement ink cartridges Not good for high volume printing Printing speed is not as fast as laser printers Ink bleeding, ink carried sideways causing blurred effects on some papers Aqueous ink is sensitive to water, even a small drop of water can cause blurring Cannot use highlighter marker on inkjet printouts

Laser
Use toner (black or colored powder) instead of liquid inks. A laser printer consists of these major components: drum cartridge, rotating mirror, toner cartridge and roller. The drum cartridge rotates as the paper is fed through. The mirror deflects laser beam across the surface of the drum. Laser beam creates charge that causes the toner to stick to the drum. As the drum rotates and presses on paper, toner is transferred from the drum to paper, creating images. Rollers then use heat and pressure to fuse toner to paper. Colored laser printers add colored toner in three additional passes.

Laser Printer

Advantages
High resolution High print speed No smearing Low cost per page (compared to inkjet printers) Printout is not sensitive to water Good for high volume printing

Disadvantages
More expensive than inkjet printers Except for high end machines, laser printers are less capable of printing vivid colors and high quality images such as photos. The cost of toner replacement and drum replacement is high Bulkier than inkjet printers Warm up time needed

Laser Printer

Laser Printer

Connectivity
What kind of cable connection? Serial cable Sends data only 1 bit at a time Printer can be up to 1000 feet away from the computer. Maximum data transfer speed = 115 kilobits/s (.115Mbits/s) Parallel cable Sends data 8 bits at a time Printer must be within 50 feet of the computer. Maximum data transfer speed: 115 kilobytes/s (.115MBYTES/s). This is 8 times faster than the maximum serial speed.

Connectivity contd
USB cable Printer must be within 5 meters (16.5 feet) of the computer, when connecting straight to the computer. Maximum data transfer speed: 12 megabits/s (1.5 MBYTES/s) Lots faster!

Connectivity
Best choice: The new USB (Universal Serial Bus) connection is likely your best choice, if your printer can use it. It is faster and a USB connector can be unplugged and re-plugged without turning off the system. USB ports are gradually, but rapidly, replacing parallel ports. The printer cannot handle the data as fast as the USB port can send it. The real limit on how fast a printer works is in how fast printer can get the characters onto the paper. Serial cable may have to be used if a printer is shared in a fairly large office, due to the length needed.

Soft Copy Output Device

A soft copy is an electronic copy of some type of data, such as a file viewed on a computer's display or transmitted as an e-mail attachment.

Types of Soft Copy Output Devices

Speaker Monitor

Speaker
In any sound system, ultimate quality depends on the speakers. A system's speaker is the component that takes the electronic signal stored on various storage medium and turns it back into actual sound that we can hear.

Speaker

Speaker

Monitor
Types of monitor
Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) Flat Plasma
Liquid Crystal Display Gas Plasma

Cathode Ray Tube

The screen is coated on the inside surface with dots of chemicals called phosphors. When a beam of electrons hits a dot, the dot will glow. On a colour monitor these phosphor dots are in groups of three: Red, Green, and Blue. This RGB system can create all the other colors by combining what dots are aglow. There are 3 signals that control the 3 electron beams in the monitor, one for each RGB colour. Each beam only touches the dots that the signal tells it to light. All the glowing dots together make the picture that you see. The human eye blends the dots to "see" all the different colors. A shadow mask blocks the path of the beams in a way that lets each beam only light its assigned colour dots.

Cathode Ray tube

Cathode Ray tube

Liquid Crystal Display

The screen is still made of dots but is quite flat. LCD displays are made of two layers of a polarizing material with a liquid crystal solution in between. An electrical signal makes the crystals line up in a way that keeps light from going through entirely or just partly. A black screen has all the crystals lined up so that no light gets through. A color LCD screen uses groups of 3 color cells instead of 3 phosphor dots.

Liquid Crystal DIsplay

Liquid Crystal Display

Gas Plasma Display

A gas-plasma display works by sandwiching neon gas between two plates. Each plate is coated with a conductive print. The print on one plate contains vertical conductive lines and the other plate has horizontal lines.

Gas Plasma contd

Together, the two plates form a grid. When electric current is passed through a horizontal and vertical line, the gas at the intersection glows, creating a point of light, or pixel. You can think of a gasplasma display as a collection of very small neon bulbs. Images on gas-plasma displays generally appear as orange objects on top of a black background.