CHAPTER – 2

TYPES
OF
HARDWARE
PA RT - 3
CONTENTS
• OUTPUT DEVICES
➢ Monitors
❖ Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) Monitors
❖ Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) Monitors
❖ Light Emitting Diode (LED) Monitors
❖ Plasma Monitors
❖ Touchscreen Monitors
❖ Organic Light Emitting Display (OLED) Monitors
➢ Printers
❖ Impact Printers
❖ Non-Impact Printers
➢ Speakers
➢ Plotters
➢ Projectors
OUTPUT DEVICES
An output device is an electronic equipment that is connected to a computer and is used to
communicate results of the processed data to the users. Thus, the output unit is responsible for
producing the output in user readable form. Various output devices like monitor (also called VDU
i.e.,Visual Display Unit), printer, plotter, speakers etc. make the output unit of computer.
➢ MONITORS
A monitor is an electronic visual computer display that includes a screen, circuitry and the case in which
that circuitry is enclosed. It displays information in a similar way to that shown on a television screen. The
picture on a monitor is made up of thousands of tiny coloured dots called pixels. Older
computer monitors made use of cathode ray tubes (CRT), which made them large, heavy and inefficient.
Nowadays, flat-screen LCD monitors are used in devices like laptops, PDAs and desktop computers
because they are lighter and more energy efficient.
A monitor is also known as a screen or a visual display unit (VDU).
❖ CATHODE RAY TUBE (CRT) MONITORS

CRT stands for "Cathode Ray Tube." CRT is the technology used in traditional computer
monitors and televisions. The image on a CRT display is created by firing electrons from the back
of the tube to phosphors located towards the front of the display. Once the electrons hit the
phosphors, they light up and are projected on the screen. The color you see on the screen is
produced by a blend of red, blue, and green light, often referred to as RGB.
❖ LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY (LCD) MONITORS
This type of monitors have a flat panel screen that uses the liquid crystal display (LCD)
technology and connects to a computer. An LCD monitor is one of the most widely used flat
panel monitors. It is more popular as a display device as compared to the CRT monitor because
of its economical power consumption, thinness and high resolution. The pixels on an LCD screen
are created by a liquid crystal material. This material polarizes light to create pixels on the screen,
depending upon the electric charge passed through it. LCD monitors take up less desk space and
are lighter than CRT monitors. Nowadays, LCD monitors use the Thin Film Transistor (TFT)
technology to display images on their screen. The main difference between LCD and TFT
monitors is that the TFT monitor uses a tiny transistor for each pixel on the display. It makes the
display brighter and the movements smoother. Laptops have used LCD screens almost
exclusively, and the LCD monitor is the standard display screen for desktop computers. By
2004, LCD desktop monitors outsold the traditional, bulky tube monitors.
A D VA N TAGES A N D D ISA D VA N TA GES O F L C D M O N ITOR S

ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES
Small and reliable More expensive than CRT

Energy efficient More prone to damage and screen

breakage
Causes less eye fatigue Images may appear blur at any other
resolution for which the monitor is not
designed for.
❖ LIGHT EMITTING DIODE (LED) MONITORS
An LED monitor is one of the most widely used monitors nowadays. It uses LED technology for
generating images on the monitor screen. When an electric current is passed through LEDs, they
emit light. The emitted light forms the pixels on the screen. The ability of a standard LED monitor
to consume up to 40% less power than a standard LCD monitor makes it more efficient to use
nowadays. The LED monitor is basically an upgrade of the LCD monitor with the difference in
technology used for backlighting. Here, LEDs are used in place of Cold Cathode Fluorescent
Lamps (CCFLs), which are used in most LCD monitors.
 A D VA N TAGES A N D D ISA D VA N TA GES O F L ED M O N ITORS

ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES
It is more reliable than LCD monitor It is more expensive than LCD monitor
It saves up to 30-40% energy than an LCD It is more prone to damage
monitor
It provides better contrast ratio than an LCD It is less brighter than an LCD monitor
monitor
❖ PLASMA MONITORS
A plasma display is a type of flat panel display that uses plasma, an electrically charged ionized gas, to
illuminate each pixel in order to produce a display output. The plasma technology utilizes small cells
containing electrically charged ionized gases across the face of a plasma display, to collectively form a
visual image. It is commonly used in large TV displays of 30 inches and higher.
Plasma monitors are not popular choice as computer monitors because of their expense, weight,
power consumption and size. However, they offer a wide range of contrasts and colors and have a
long display life so they can be used for years without going dead.
 TOUCHSCREEN MONITORS
A touch screen is a display device that allows the user to interact with a computer by using their
finger or stylus. They can be a useful alternative to a mouse or keyboard for navigating
a GUI (graphical user interface). Touch screens are used on a variety of devices, such as computer and
laptop displays, smartphones, tablets, checkout store terminals etc. Some touch screens use a grid of
infrared beams to sense the presence of a finger instead of utilizing touch-sensitive input.
Touchscreen monitors are built by combining touch sensitive materials with a durable but sensitive
outer material that protect the monitor from fingers but still allows the monitor to detect where a
person is placing his fingers.
ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF TOUCHSCREENS
❖ ORGANIC LIGHT EMITTING DISPL AY (OLED) MONITORS
OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) is a new display technology that is brighter, more efficient,
thinner and feature better refresh rates and contrast than an LCD display. OLEDs deliver the
best picture quality ever and are used in high-end smartphones and tablets. OLED Monitors are
created from pushing an electronic current through organic materials to glow. By manipulating
the materials and the electric current, the glow can be made to be of desired colour.
OLED displays are extremely thin and light and offer the promise of portable, light-weight
displays that can be worn on things like clothing. But this technology is still so new and the price
of OLED monitors is much more than traditional CRT or LCD monitors while the life of the
monitor is relatively low.
➢ PRINTERS
A printer is an output device that prints the data processed by a computer. After creating a
document using the computer, you can send the document to the printer for printing. The
printer generates a hard copy known as printouts of the document. It can print documents in
colour as well as in black and white. The speed of a printer is normally rated by pages per minute
(ppm) or by characters per second (cps).
Printers can be classified into the following two categories :
❖ Impact printer
❖ Non-impact printer
❖ IMPACT PRINTER
Impact printer refers to a class of printers that work by banging a head or needle against an
ink ribbon to make a mark on the paper. It functions by striking a pin on the surface of an
inked ribbon.This includes dot-matrix printers, daisy-wheel printers, and line printers. Impact
printers are most functional in specialized environments where low-cost printing is essential.
✓ DOT MATRIX PRINTER
A dot matrix printer (DMP) is a type of printer that produces characters and illustrations by striking pins against
an ink ribbon to print closely spaced dots in the appropriate shape. These printers are generally considered
outdated, as they cannot create high-quality prints and are costly as well. However, they have a certain specialty
that other printers like inkjet and laser printers do not have: as they use impact for printing, they can be used to
print multiple copies of text at the same time with the help of carbon copying. Therefore, they are mostly used in
places where multipart forms are required.A dot matrix printer is also known as an impact matrix printer.
In a dot matrix printer, the characters and letters are formed by a matrix of dots. A print head, which has many
pins in it, moves in the required direction and strikes against a cloth ribbon which is soaked in ink, making a mark
on the paper. The dots are spaced closely in a particular shape to make the intended character. This looks quite
similar to the printing mechanism of typewriters. However, dot matrix printers are different in the sense that many
different characters and graphics can be printed. A character printed by a DMP is actually an accumulation of many
such dots on a small area of the paper.
❖ NON-IMPACT PRINTER
Printers are categorized according to whether or not the image printed is formed by striking an
ink ribbon against the paper. Impact printers have physical contact; non-impact printers (NIPs) do
not. Non-impact printers are now most common, as they are faster and quieter than impact
printers. Non-impact printers form characters and images without direct physical contact
between the printing mechanism and the paper. For example, inkjet printers spray tiny drops of
ink onto the page, while laser printers have a cylindrical drum that rolls electrically charged ink
onto the paper.
Non-impact printers use a cartridge filled with toner or liquid ink, which allows them to produce
fine-quality images quickly and quietly. The printer cartridges are easily recyclable, resulting in
environmental benefits as well.
Two types of non-impact printers often used with microcomputers are laser printers and ink-jet
printers.
✓ Laser Printer:
The laser print uses a beam of laser for printing. Like a dot-matrix printer, a laser printer
creates images with dots. However, as in a photocopying machine, these images are created on a
drum, treated with a magnetically charged ink-like toner (powder), and then transferred from
drum to paper.
There are good reasons why laser printers are so popular. They produce very sharp and high
quality printouts. They are quiet and very fast. They can print 4-32 text-only pages per minute for
individual microcomputers, and more than 120 pages per minute for mainframes. (Pages with
more graphics print more slowly.) They can print in many fonts (type styles and sizes). The more
expensive models can print in different colors.
✓ Ink-jet printer
Like laser and dot-matrix printers, ink-jet printers also form images with little dots. Ink-jet
printers spray small, electrically charged droplets of ink from four nozzles through holes in a
matrix at high speed onto paper.
Ink-jet printers can print in color and are quieter and much less expensive than a color laser printer.
However, they are slower and print in a somewhat lower resolution (300-720 dpi) than laser
printers. Some new, expensive ink-jet printers print up 1200 or 1400 dpi.
➢ PLOTTER
Pen Plotter
A plotter is a computer printing device ideal for engineering, drafting and many other
applications that require intricate graphics. Plotters do not use toner or ink to draw
images. Instead , it uses a special kind of pen controlled by the motors that draws an
unbroken line on the paper.
Plotter is 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. Multicolor plotters use different-colored pens
to draw different colors.
In general, plotters are considerably more expensive than printers. They are used in
engineering applications where precision is mandatory.
The plotter is a graphics output device used to create drawings on paper. There are Photo Plotter
two types of plotters :
❖ Pen Plotter : It is an electromechanical device. A pen is moved in two dimensions
(up/down and left/right) across a paper or film media to create output.
❖ Photo Plotter : It uses fibre optics technology to produce the image on dry silver
paper.
➢ SPEAKERS
Speakers are one of the most common output devices used with computer systems. Some
speakers are designed to work specifically with computers, while others can be hooked up to any
type of sound system. Regardless of their design, the purpose of speakers is to produce
audio output that can be heard by the listener.
Speakers are transducers that convert electromagnetic waves into sound waves. The speakers
receive audio input from a device such as a computer or an audio receiver. This input may be
either in analog or digital form. Analog speakers simply amplify the analog electromagnetic waves
into sound waves. Since sound waves are produced in analog form, digital speakers must first
convert the digital input to an analog signal, then generate the sound waves.
➢ PROJECTOR
A projector is a device to generate the image on exceptional surfaces, like a projection screen
or white walls, that have been used as a screen surface. Projectors are essential in showing the
content, including the images, slides & videos to the people sitting in a group. It is an output
device that can take the display of a computer screen and project a large version of it onto a flat
surface. Projectors are often used in meetings and presentations to help make sure everyone in
the room can view the presentation. Projectors produce bigger images. Larger images create
easier viewing, less strain.