COMPUTER - OUTPUT DEVICES

Following are few of the important output devices which are used in a computer.

Monitors

Graphic Plotter

Printer

Monitors

Monitors, commonly called as Visual Display Unit (VDU), are the main output device of a
computer. It forms images from tiny dots, called pixels that are arranged in a rectangular form.
The sharpness of the image depends upon the number of pixels.

There are two kinds of viewing screen used for monitors.

Cathode-Ray Tube (CRT)

Flat- Panel Display

Cathode-Ray Tube (CRT) Monitor

The CRT display is made up of small picture elements called pixels. The smaller the pixels, the
better the image clarity, or resolution. It takes more than one illuminated pixel to form whole
character, such as the letter ‘e’ in the word help.

A finite number of characters can be displayed on a screen at once. The screen can be divided
into a series of character boxes - fixed location on the screen where a standard character can
be placed. Most screens are capable of displaying 80 characters of data horizontally and 25
lines vertically. There are some disadvantages of CRT:

Large in Size

High power consumption

The flat-panel display refers to a class of video devices that have reduced volume, weight and
power requirement in comparison to the CRT. You can hang them on walls or wear them on
your wrists. Current uses of flat-panel displays include calculators, video games, monitors,
laptop computer, graphics display.

The flat-panel display is divided into two categories:

Emissive Displays - The emissive displays are devices that convert electrical energy into
light. Example are plasma panel and LED(Light-Emitting Diodes).

Non-Emissive Displays - The Non-emissive displays use optical effects to convert sunlight
or light from some other source into graphics patterns.
Example is LCD(Liquid-Crystal Device)
Printers

Printer is an output device, which is used to print information on paper.

There are two types of printers:

Impact Printers

Non-Impact Printers

Impact Printers

The impact printers print the characters by striking them on the ribbon which is then pressed on
the paper.

Characteristics of Impact Printers are the following:

Very low consumable costs

Useful for bulk printing due to low cost

There is physical contact with the paper to produce an image

These printers are of two types

Line printers

Character Printers

Character printers are the printers which print one character at a time.

These are further divided into two types:

Dot Matrix Printer(DMP)

Daisy Wheel

Dot Matrix Printer

In the market one of the most popular printers is Dot Matrix Printer. These printers are popular
because of their ease of printing and economical price. Each character printed is in form of
pattern of dots and head consists of a Matrix of Pins of size (5*7, 7*9, 9*7 or 9*9) which come
out to form a character that is why it is called Dot Matrix Printer.

Advantages

Inexpensive

Widely Used

Other language characters can be printed

Disadvantages

Slow Speed
 Poor Quality
Daisy Wheel

Head is lying on a wheel and pins corresponding to characters are like petals of Daisy (flower
name) that is why it is called Daisy Wheel Printer. These printers are generally used for word-
processing in offices which require a few letters to be sent here and there with very nice
quality.

Advantages

More reliable than DMP

Better quality

The fonts of character can be easily changed

Disadvantages

Slower than DMP

Noisy

More expensive than DMP

Line printers are the printers which print one line at a time.

These are of further two types

Drum Printer

Chain Printer

Drum Printer

This printer is like a drum in shape so it is called drum printer. The surface of drum is divided
into number of tracks. Total tracks are equal to size of paper i.e. for a paper width of 132
characters, drum will have 132 tracks. A character set is embossed on track.
The different character sets available in the market are 48 character set, 64 and 96 characters
set. One rotation of drum prints one line. Drum printers are fast in speed and can print 300 to
2000 lines per minute.

Advantages

Very high speed

Very expensive

Characters fonts cannot be changed

Chain Printer

In this printer, chain of character sets are used so it is called Chain Printer. A standard character
set may have 48, 64, or 96 characters.

Advantages

Character fonts can easily be changed.

Different languages can be used with the same printer.

Disadvantages

Noisy

Non-impact Printers

Non-impact printers print the characters without using ribbon. These printers print a complete
page at a time so they are also called as Page Printers.

These printers are of two types

Laser Printers

Inkjet Printers

Characteristics of Non-impact Printers

Faster than impact printers.

They are not noisy.

Support many fonts and different character size.

Laser Printers
These are non-impact page printers. They use laser lights to produce the dots needed to form
the characters to be printed on a page.

Advantages

Very high speed

Very high quality output

Give good graphics quality

Support many fonts and different character size

Disadvantages

E xp en sive.

C an n ot be used to p roduce m ultip le cop ies of a docum en t in a sin gle p rin tin g.
Inkjet Printers

Inkjet printers are non-impact character printers based on a relatively new technology. They
print characters by spraying small drops of ink onto paper. Inkjet printers produce high quality
output with presentable features.
They make less noise because no hammering is done and these have many styles of printing
modes available. Colour printing is also possible. Some models of Inkjet printers can produce
multiple copies of printing also.

Advantages

High quality printing

More reliable

Disadvantages

E x p en s i v e as c o s t p er p age i s h i g h

S l o w as c o m p ared to l as er p ri n ter