Garbage in, garbage out. That is the truth. If we enter bad information in the computers we will get bad data as an output.

So lets see what we use to enter data in a computer system.

Wow, keyboards have not changed in the last 20 years. Well some shape has changed, the "feeling" might have changed, some new buttons added, but basically it is the same as the typewriter was.

The competition for the keyboard is strong. Voice recognition , pen input and mouse based input.

They have two type of connector: Ps2 ( about 8 mm diameter ) and the old AT ( about 15-20 mm diameter ).

The mouse has really taken off with the advent of GUI ( Graphic User Interface ) software , and Microsoft Windows is the greatest of all.

Mice with tail ( cable ) and without ( infrared ) are available.

Please keep in mind the pad is there only for comfort, not because the mouse needs it.

Mouse general principle is a ball rotating which sends by way of a transducer a signal to the software of the computer telling where it is going ( left, up and so on...) and 2 - 3 buttons telling it to do something in that particular moment , which is related to the position on the screen of the pointer.

Fairly simple isn't ?

Digital cameras are the darling computer toy of the moment. They are fantastic !!! Go out click a few photos, come back to the pc and send them to it, view them, if you want you print them, if not you can discard them or file them on a CD-rom for future reference.
Rating of digital cameras is given by quality of the optics ( as in the traditional cameras ) , by the amount of memory ( number of photos stored before to be overwritten , and colour resolution ), type of communication with the remote ( how talks to the pc ) and the software bundled with the camera.

Scanners nowadays are part of the package of a normal computer system set-up.

Scanners are mostly flat-bed , in colours and with a parallel or USB interface.

Some models are coming part of a multi component set, where there is a printer, fax and a copier part, but fundamentally everything is making use of the same scanning mechanism, which is an array of photosensitive LED's ( Light Emitted Diode ) which translate the reflected light coming from the scanned page to a digitally understandable pattern for the computer system.

Tutorials > Hardware > Input devices