What are computer output devices?
- Details
- Category: Computer Basics
Computer output devices are the components that have been used to receive the output of processed data. The output could be a picture displayed on the screen, printed document or a song played.
Most of the computer output devices are common to home or office environments. However, there are devices that are not commonly available.
General Computer Output Devices
1. Monitor
Most of you may call this as ‘”Computer Screen”. Monitors are in different sizes and types. Average size of a Monitor used in a home environment is from 15” – 21”. However, there are large specially made Monitors have been used for special purposes such as architecture designing, production designing etc.
Having a quality Monitor is not enough to get a quality output. It is important to have a quality Video card (graphic card) installed in your PC. More information on Video cards can be found in Computer hardware components page.
2. Printers (printed copy)
We all use printers. There are different types of printers such as
Laser
This is the highest quality printer among all types of printers. These printers and the consumables are expensive than other printers. Laser printers are useful in office environments where speed and high quality is important.
Inkjet
Good for low volume home use. These printers are using cartridges filled with ink to produce the printouts. Relatively slow in printing (around 4-6 pages per minute)
Dot-matrix
This is a very old type printer. They are using ribbons. Quality is not very good. Useful for low quality continues printing.
Thermal
These printers do imaged based printing. Usually they have been used to print plastic cards, labels etc.
It is important to buy the most suitable printer for your requirement.
3. Speakers (sound) It is important to have a quality sound card in order to get the best output from your speakers.
Special Computer Output devices
Plotter : Used especially for building plans and engineering drawing and really large pictures. Plotters use a pen to draw continuous lines and are favored for engineering drawings, which require both large sheets of paper and precise lines.
Microfilm (COM): Computer Output Microfilm. The computer directly generates the microfilm images.
Document printers (multi functional devices)
These are the devices that can handle multiple tasks. The common tasks they can handle are
Printing
Photocopying
Faxing