Computers Before a computer can process your data, you need some method to input the data into

the machine. The device you use will depend on what form this data takes (be it text, sound, artwork, etc.). Similarly, after the computer has processed your data, you often need to produce output of the results. This output could be a display on the computer screen, hardcopy on printed pages, or even the audio playback of music you composed on the computer.

Input Devices
Keyboard

Input Devices Keyboard Mouse Touch pad Track Ball Other Output Devices CRT Monitor Flat Panel Display Ink Jet Printer Laster Printer Other

The computer keyboard is used to enter text information into the computer, as when you type the contents of a report. The keyboard can also be used to type commands directing the computer to perform certain actions. Commands are typically chosen from an on-screen menu using a mouse, but there are often keyboard shortcuts for giving these same commands. PC Keyboard (you have one in In addition to the keys of the main keyboard (used for front of you that you can see for a closer look) typing text), keyboards usually also have a numeric keypad (for entering numerical data efficiently), a bank of editing keys (used in text editing operations), and a row of function keys along the top (to easily invoke certain program functions). Laptop computers, which dont have room for large

keyboards, often include a fn key so that other keys can perform double duty (such as having a numeric keypad function embedded within the main keyboard keys). Improper use or positioning of a keyboard can lead to repetitive-stress injuries. Some ergonomic keyboards are designed with angled arrangements of keys and with built-in wrist rests that can minimize your risk of RSIs. Most keyboards attach to the PC via a PS/2 connector or USB port (newer). Older Macintosh computers used an ABD connector, but for several years now all Mac keyboards have connected using USB. Pointing Devices The graphical user interfaces (GUIs) in use today require some kind of device for positioning the onscreen cursor. Typical pointing devices are: mouse, trackball, touch pad, trackpoint, graphics tablet, joystick, and touch screen. Pointing devices, such as a mouse, connected to the PC via aserial ports (old), PS/2 mouse port (newer), or USB port (newest). Older Macs used ADB to connect their mice, but all recent Macs use USB (usually to a USB port right on the USB keyboard). Mouse The mouse pointing device sits on your work surface and is moved with your hand. In older mice, a ball in the bottom of the mouse rolls on the surface as you move the mouse, and internal rollers sense the ball movement and transmit the information to the computer via the cord of the mouse. The newer optical mouse does not use a rolling Two-button mouse with scroll ball, but instead uses a light and a small optical wheel sensor to detect the motion of the mouse by tracking a tiny image of the desk surface. Optical mice avoid the problem of a dirty mouse ball, which causes regular mice to roll unsmoothly if the mouse ball and

internal rollers are not cleaned frequently. A cordless or wireless mouse communicates with the computer via radio waves (often using BlueTooth hardware and protocol) so that a cord is not needed (but such mice need internal batteries). A mouse also includes one or more buttons (and possibly a scroll wheel) to allow users to interact with Wireless Macintosh mouse the GUI. The traditional PC mouse has two buttons, while the traditional Macintosh mouse has one button. On either type of computer you can also use mice with three or more buttons and a small scroll wheel (which can also usually be clicked like a button). Touch pad Most laptop computers today have a touch pad pointing device. You move the on-screen cursor by sliding your finger along the surface of the touch pad. The buttons are located below the pad, but most touch pads allow you to perform mouse clicks by tapping on the pad itself. Touch pads have the advantage over mice that they take up much less room to use. They have the advantage over trackballs (which were used on early laptops) that there are no moving parts to get dirty and result in jumpy cursor control. Trackpoint Some sub-notebook computers (such as the IBM ThinkPad), which lack room for even a touch pad, incorporate atrackpoint, a small rubber projection embedded between the keys of the keyboard. The trackpoint acts like a little joystick that can be used to control the position of the on-screen cursor. Trackball Touch pad of a PC laptop

Trackpoint

The trackball is sort of like an upside-down mouse, with the ball located on top. You use your fingers to roll the trackball, and internal rollers (similar to whats inside a mouse) sense the motion which is transmitted to the computer. Trackballs have the advantage over mice in that the body of the trackball remains stationary on your desk, so you dont need as much room to use the trackball. Early laptop Trackball computers often used trackballs (before superior touch pads came along). Trackballs have traditionally had the same problem as mice: dirty rollers can make their cursor control jumpy and unsmooth. But there are modern optical trackballs that dont have this problem because their designs eliminate the rollers. Joysticks Joysticks and other game controllers can also be connected to a computer as pointing devices. They are generally used for playing games, and not for controlling the on-screen cursor in productivity software. Touch screen Some computers, especially small hand-held PDAs, have touch sensitive display screens. The user can make choices and press button images on the screen. You often use a stylus, which you hold like a pen, to write on the surface of a small touch screen. Graphics tablet A graphics tablet consists of an electronic writing area and a special pen that works with it. Graphics tablets allows artists to create graphical images with motions and actions similar to using more traditional drawing tools. The pen of the graphics tablet is pressure sensitive, so pressing harder or softer can result in brush strokes of different width (in an appropriate graphics program). Scanners Graphics tablet.

A scanner is a device that images a printed page or graphic by digitizing it, producing an image made of tiny pixels of different brightness and color values which are represented numerically and sent to the computer. Scanners scan graphics, but they can also scan pages of text which are then run through OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software that identifies the individual letter shapes and creates a text file of the page's contents. Microphone A microphone can be attached to a computer to record sound (usually through a sound card input or circuitry built into the motherboard). The sound is digitizedturned into numbers that represent the original analog sound wavesand stored in the computer to later processing and playback. MIDI Devices MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a system designed to transmit information between electronic musical instruments. A MIDI musical keyboard can be attached to a computer and allow a performer to play music that is captured by the computer system as a sequence of notes with the associated timing (instead of recording digitized sound waves).

Output Devices
CRT Monitor

The traditional output device of a personal computer has been the CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) monitor. Just like a television set (an older one, anyway) the CRT monitor contains a large cathode ray tube that uses an electron beam of varying strength to paint a picture onto the color phosphorescent dots on the inside of the screen. CRT monitors are heavy and use more electrical power than flat panel displays, but they are preferred by some graphic artists for their accurate color rendition, and preferred by some gamers for faster response to rapidly changing graphics. Monitor screen size is measured diagonally across the screen, in inches. Not all of the screen area may be usable for image display, so the viewable area is also specified. The resolutionof the monitor is the maximum number of pixels it can display horizontally and vertically (such as 800 x 600, or 1024 x 768, or 1600 x 1200). Most monitors can display several resolutions below its maximum setting. Pixels (short for picture elements) are the small dots that make of the image displayed on the screen. The spacing of the screens tiny phosphor dots is called the dot pitch (dp), typically .28 or .26 (measured in millimeters). A screen with a smaller dot pitch produces sharper images. Your computer must produce a video signal that a monitor can display. This may be handled by circuitry on the motherboard, but is usually handled by a video card in one of the computers expansion slots; often the slot is a special one dedicated to video use, such as an AGP slot (Accelerated Graphics Port). Video cards are also called video display adapters, and graphics cards. Many video cards contain separate processors and dedicated video memory for generating complex graphics quickly without burdening the CPU. These accelerated graphics cards are loved by gamers. Flat Panel Monitor

CRT monitor

A flat panel display usually uses an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screen to display output from the computer. The LCD consists of several thin layers that polarize the light passing through them. The polarization of one layer, containing long thin molecules called liquid crystals, can be controlled electronically at each pixel, blocking varying amounts Flat panel display (LCD) of the light to make a pixel lighter or darker. Other types of flat panel technology exist (such as plasma displays) but LCDs are most commonly used in computers, especially laptops. Older LCDs had slow response times and low contrast, butactive matrix LCD screens have a transparent thin film transistor (TFT) controlling each pixel, so response, contrast, and viewing angle are much improved. Flat panel displays are much lighter and less bulky than CRT monitors, and they consume much less power. They have been more expensive than CRTs in the past, but the price gap is narrowing. You will see many more flat panels in the future. As with CRTs, the display size of a flat panel is expressed in inches, and the resolution is the number of pixels horizontally and vertically on the display. Ink Jet Printer For hardcopy (printed) output, you need some kind of printer attached to your computer (or available over a network). The most common type of printer for home systems is the color ink jet printer. These printers form the image on the page by spraying tiny droplets of ink from the print head. The printer needs several colors of ink (cyan, yellow, magenta, and black) to make color images. Some photo-quality ink jet Inkjet Printer printers have more colors of ink. Ink jet printers are inexpensive, but the cost of consumables (ink cartridges and special paper) make them costly to operate in the long run for many purposes.

Laser Printer A laser printer produces good quality images by the same technology that photocopiers use. A drum coated with photosensitive material is charged, then an image is written onto it by a laser (or LEDs) which makes those areas lose the charge. The drum then rolls through toner (tiny plastic particles of pigment) that are attracted to the charged areas of the drum. The toner is then deposited onto the paper, and then Laser Printer fused into the paper with heat. Most laser printers are monochrome (one color only, usually black), but more expensive laser printers with multiple color toner cartridges can produce color output. Laser printers are faster than ink jet printers. Their speed is rated in pages per minute (ppm). Laser printers are more expensive than ink jets, but they are cheaper to run in the long term if you just need good quality black & white pages. Other Printers Multi-function printers are available that not only operate as a computer printer, but also include the hardware needed to be a scanner, photocopier, and FAX machine as well. Dot matrix printers use small electromagnetically activated pins in the print head, and an inked ribbon, to produce images by impact. These printers are slow and noisy, and are not commonly used for personal computers anymore (but they can print multi-layer forms, which neither ink jet or laser printers can). Sound Output Computers also produce sound output, ranging from simple beeps alerting the user, to impressive game sound effects, to concert quality music. The circuitry to produce sound may be included on the motherboard, but high quality audio output from a PC usually requires a sound card in one of the expansion slots, connected to a set of good quality

external speakers or headphones. Multimedia is a term describing computer output that includes sound, text, graphics, movies, and animation. A sound card is an example of a multimedia output device (as is a monitor that can display graphics).

What is a CPU?: The Central Processing Unit (CPU) is responsible for interpreting and executing most of the commands from the computer'shardware and software. The CPU could be considered the "brains" of the computer. The CPU is Also Known As: processor, computer processor, microprocessor, central processor, "the brains of the computer" Important CPU Facts: Not all central processing units have pins on their bottom sides, but in the ones that do, the pins are easily bent. Take great care when handling, especially when installing onto the motherboard.

A word processor is a computer application used for the production (including composition, editing, formatting, and possibly printing) of any sort of printable material. Word processor may also refer to a type of stand-alone office machine, popular in the 1970s and 1980s, combining the keyboard text-entry and printing functions of an electric typewriter with a dedicated processor (like a computer processor) for the editing of text. Although features and design varied between manufacturers and models, with new features added as technology advanced, word processors for several years usually featured a monochrome display and the ability to save documents on memory cards or diskettes. Later models introduced innovations such as spell-checkingprograms, increased formatting options, and dot-matrix printing. As the more versatile combination of a personal computer and separate printer became commonplace, most business-machine companies stopped manufacturing the word processor as a stand-alone office machine. As of 2009 there were only two U.S. companies, Classic [1] and AlphaSmart, which still made stand-alone word processors. Many older machines, however, remain in use. Since 2009, Sentinel has offered a machine described as a word processor, but in actuality it is [2] more accurately a highly specialised microcomputer, used for accounting and publishing.

Word processors are descended from early text formatting tools (sometimes called text justification tools, from their only real capability). Word processing was one of the earliest applications for the personal computer in office productivity. Although early word processors used tag-based markup for document formatting, most modern word processors take advantage of a graphical user interface providing some form of what-you-see-is-whatyou-get editing. Most are powerful systems consisting of one or more programs that can produce any arbitrary combination of images, graphics and text, the latter handled with type-setting capability. Microsoft Word is the most widely used word processing software. Microsoft estimates that over [3] 500,000,000 people use the Microsoft Office suite, which includes Word. Many other word processing applications exist, including WordPerfect (which dominated the market from the mid-1980s to early-1990s on computers running Microsoft's MS-DOS operating system) and open source applications OpenOffice.org Writer, LibreOffice Writer, AbiWord,KWord, and LyX. Web-based word processors, such as Office Web Apps or Google Docs, are a relatively new category.

Characteristics
Word processing typically implies the presence of text manipulation functions that extend beyond a basic ability to enter and change text, such as automatic generation of: batch mailings using a form letter template and an address database (also called mail merging); indices of keywords and their page numbers; tables of contents with section titles and their page numbers; tables of figures with caption titles and their page numbers; cross-referencing with section or page numbers; footnote numbering; new versions of a document using variables (e.g. model numbers, product names, etc.)

Other word processing functions include spell checking (actually checks against wordlists), "grammar checking" (checks for what seem to be simple grammar errors), and a "thesaurus" function (finds words with similar or opposite meanings). Other common features include collaborative editing, comments and annotations, support for images and diagrams and internal cross-referencing.
A table of values arranged in rows and columns. Each value can have a predefined relationship to the other values. If you change one value, therefore, you may need to change other values as well. Spreadsheet applications (sometimes referred to simply as spreadsheets) are computer programs that let you create and manipulate spreadsheets electronically. In a spreadsheet application, each value sits in a cell. You can define what type of data is in each cell and how different cells depend on one another. The relationships between cells are called formulas, and the namesof the cells are called labels. Once you have defined the cells and the formulas for linking them together, you can enter your data. You can then modify selected values to see how all the other values change accordingly. This enables you to study various what-if scenarios. A simple example of a useful spreadsheet application is one that calculates mortgage payments for a house. You would define five cells: 1. total cost of the house 2. down payment 3. mortgage rate 4. mortgage term 5. monthly payment

Once you had defined how these cells depend on one another, you could enter numbers and play with various possibilities. For example, keeping all the other values the same, you could see how different mortgage rates would affect your monthly payments. There are a number of spreadsheet applications on the market, Lotus 1-2-3and Excel being among the most famous. The more powerful spreadsheet applications support graphics features that enable you to produce charts and graphs from the data. Most spreadsheet applications are multidimensional, meaning that you canlink one spreadsheet to another. A threedimensional spreadsheet, for example, is like a stack of spreadsheets all connected by formulas. A change made in one spreadsheet automatically affects other spreadsheets.