The word peripheral means electronic equipment or precisely a computer device (if we talk about computer peripherals) connected with the help of a cable to the CPU of the computer or commonly called the cabinet.
Computer peripheral includes all the parts of a computer i.e. input devices and output devices. The combination of both input and output devices are the storage devices because we store and retrieve data from these storage devices. Let us discuss in brief different computer peripherals.
Storage Devices
Storage devices include CDROM, DVDROM, BLU RAY, HD DVD, HDD, USB Drives, Disk Array, etc. All these devices are categorized according to their storage capacity. CDRom can store only up to 700 Mb (Mega Bytes) of data, DVDRom can store data in between 4.7 GB (Giga Bytes) 8.3 GB (Giga Bytes), BLURAY has a storage capacity of 25 GB to 50GB (in future it can be extended to 200 GB), HDDVD can store from 15 GB to 51 GB of data, HDDs start with few GBs and end up with capacity of few Terabytes or even Perabytes and USB devices support only a few GBs up to a maximum of 16 GB. A USB interface can be provided to desktop HDDs to provide portability.
Along with storage capacity you should also consider the data rate for each one of this and their reliability to store data. HDDs are considered to be safer for storing data but you can never fully rely on an electronic device.
Input Devices
Input devices are those devices with the help of which you can feed data into a computer. In other words, they are a means to provide instructions or feed data into the computer for working according to your requirement. Various input devices are:
1. Keyboard
2. Mouse
3. Scanner
4. Webcam
5. Barcode reader
6. Microphone and other pointing devices like trackball, joystick, Touch screen, etc.
Output Devices
Output devices are those devices with which a computer presents the data or output to the user. Output can be in the form of formatted data or the results of a process, whether the process failed or executed successfully. Various output devices are
1. Monitor
Monitor can be CRT (Cathode Ray Tube), TFT or an LCD (Liquid Crystal display) monitor.
2. Printers
Printers can be categorized into drum printers (not used now), plotters (not used now), dot matrix printers (not used now), inkjet printers (used by home users) and laser printers, mostly used in offices.
3. Speakers
4. Sound Card
5. Network card
6. Graphics card, etc
People try to differentiate between computer peripherals and computer accessories but in my view they are one and the same thing. When we talk about the word peripheral it is always related to the computer, whereas, accessories may be available for any product. But, when we say computer accessories then it means the same as the word computer peripherals.
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