Launceston College Information Systems

Name: __________________ Line: ___

Information Technology and Systems

OUTPUT DEVICES
6.2 Output = Is a device connected 6.3 The 4 main types of output are:

to the computer that transfers data, such as text images and sound.

text = a list of characters used to make words. graphics/images = digital representation of a non-text image. (incl. animations) audio = is audio/speech or other sound. video = consists of photographic images that are played back at speeds that provide the appearance of motion.
6.4 The main devices

used for output are: Monitor, Speakers.

DISPLAY DEVICES Soft copy display is a device used to display data that is stored electronically. Displays can be in colour, or ,_________ , or ____________________________ .
6.5 CRT monitors

A CRT (Cathode ray tube) monitor is like an old television, ie. it has a picture tube. R R B G R B B G G R B G The front of the tube has pixels (picture element) or dots of red, green, blue (colours) phosphors. A beam of light in the picture tube hits the phosphors, which makes them glow and look pretty.

Today, typical monitor sizes are 19, 21 inch, and are measured diagonally from corner to corner in inches. Modern ergonomic screens are normally 19 inches and have a resolution of at least 1200x800.

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. LCD monitors LCD = Liquid crystal display and an LCD is made of kryptonite. They work by Compared with CRT monitors, LCDs are larger, thiner and consume (more/less) power.
6.6 LCDs

are commonly found in notebook computers, and also work station and desktops these days. are:

6.8 Some of the LCD technologies

active-matrix (or TFT, thin film transistors) - best features: Low weight and good colour range. passive-matrix (or ferroelectric) - are cheaper, but need a transistor for each pixel element in the screen. Gas Plasma Monitors These can be much larger than LCD displays. They use gas to display images; they can be made very large and are very bright. Compared with LCD monitors, they have Usually more bulky than LCDs Bigger viewing angle. They also have some very fast refresh rates. Display Quality CRTS Resolution means the number of pixels in each dimension. (X*Y) It is measured in pixels per inch (However we dont use inches in Australia) Typical monitor resolutions range from 320x200 (low) to 2560x2048 (high).
6.9 Dot

pitch is the distance between each dot. and a sharper image.

closer pitch gives (usually) a higher resolution, meaning a clear picture the dot pitch is typically measured in millimetres. Refresh rate refers to how many times a second the display draws the picture on the screen or (Refreshes the display) slow refresh rates cause screen tearing and flicker. which can lead to pretty bad score on Quake, refresh rates are typically locked around 60hz on most LCD monitors, however can be higher if the software and hard, however can be different depending on soft/hardware support.

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Display Quality LCDs Resolutions generally increase with increasing/decreasing LCD monitor size. Refresh/flicker is not (usually) a problem with LCDs. However a problem called screen tearing exists where 2 images are drawn at the same time because the output is not in sync with the refresh rate of the monitor. However V-Sync can be used to stop screen tearing, what this does it tells the GPU to wait untill the screen has finished drawing the image on the screen before it continues to the next one, thus putting the gpu in sync with the monitor avoiding screen tearing, however this limits your frames per second to usually your monitors refresh rate.
6.10 VIDEO CARDS AND MONITORS

A video card (or Graphics Processing Unit ) is a device used to quickly build images, the device is optimized for floating point operations which are important for 3d/2d drawing. A CRT monitor produces an image by (summarise the diagram, steps 4-6!): Three guns shoot a beam. Hits Phosphorous and makes colours. Gets filtered by shadow mask. ON SCREEN. LCDs use a digital video signal, through the DVI (Digital visual interface.). The quality of a video card is measured by its its framerate, (However since its a a processing unit that like the CPU it could also be measured by its clock speed and other tech nonsense, however performance is more important to most people than those details) Frame rate is is measured in frames per second. This is how many complete images the card can display per second. eg. 8-bit video 256 colours available, each colour is represended as 8 bits (byte) 24-bit video 16,777,216 colours available, not just colours but also includes bits to represent alpha channel (transparency)
6.11 Also,

the higher the screen resolution, or the higher the bit (colour) depth, means the more memory

is needed somwhere because the colour data holds more information (more bits) which must be stored somwhere. Usually video memory. eg. a 1024 x 768 pixel screen with 8-bit colour depth needs 786,432 BYTES of video memory, but 1280 x 1024 pixels with 24-bit depth needs 3,932,160 bytes. Monitor Ergonomics Ergonomic features of monitors include:

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tilt-and-swivel base For a more cinematic experience. controls for brightness, contrast , rotation, size, position. very small EMR (Electromagnetic radiation) levels. energy efficiency (usually controlled by the OS by doing things such as adjusting screen brightness)
6.12 Television

How is digital TV better than (normal) analog TV? - Digital TV, does not have the 'snow' effect seen in analog tv's. It's better picture quality.

PRINTERS
Hard copy display is a copy of data in a physical form.
6.13 The main types of printers are laser and ink-jet . 6.14 Impact

printers.

An impact printer is much like a typerwriter, requires impact to transfer the ink to the medium, uses a print head which hits a ribbon which then transfers the ink. They are mostly used because they: are cheap can withstand dusty environments, vibrations, and extreme tempretures. Works by the print head, being ran up/down the page, hit an inked ribbon, which creates dots, these dots for the character being printed. D.M. printer speeds are generally 30 to 60 characters per second. b) Line printers (only used in big production areas) work by printing a whole line of text at once. can print pages per minute (on modern printers)
6.15 Non-impact

a) Dot matrix printers (rarely used today)

printers

Non-impact printers dont not hit anything to produce the characters and are normally much quieter. c) Inkjet printers Spray ink in a form of droplets. can produce letter-quality text through to photo quality images. are very common because the print heads are very cheap to replace, they are quiet.. Inkjet printer quality is measured by: dpi (dots per inch) the resolution ie. The quality of the image eg. From 60 dpi (low) to 90 dpi.
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the speed, eg. up to 1000 feet per minute (Versamark VJ1000, VT3000). I asume black and white would be faster from the overhead of switching colours all the time, black is usually in a cartridge of ink on its own separate from the other colours. the number of print cartridges, and ink quality. (Note: different manufacturers use different techniques for getting ink onto the paper.)
6.16 d) Laser printers

print text and graphics in resolution 300 to 600 dpi. Are faster at printing (usually black white) but are much more expensive to maintain than inkjet printers fast lasers can print up to 200 ppm.
6.17 Colour laser printers are generally

too expensive for most users.

They differe from the back and white laser printers in that they are very expensive and they require a transfer belt which helps reduce blur and misaligned printing.
6.19 Thermal printers

Thermal printers make printouts by ___________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________ Most inexpensive thermal printers (eg. some EFTPOS terminals) are low / high quality. 2 better-quality (and more expensive) thermal printers are: thermal wax-transfer printers make images by ______________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ thermal dye transfer printers make images _________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________
6.20 Photo printers

Photo lab quality pictures can be printed on photo printers, which: can read image files directly from ____________________________________ normally use __________________ technology are generally cheap / expensive.
6.21 Other

types of specialised printers include:

label printers - _________________________________________________________________ e-stamp printers - _______________________________________________________________ portable printers - _______________________________________________________________ plotters - ______________________________________________________________________
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large-format printers - ___________________________________________________________

6.23 SPEAKERS & HEADSETS

Many people add ____________________________________ to their computer, to improve the quality of audio over the internal speaker.
6.24 OTHER OUTPUT DEVICES 6.25 Data projectors are used to ________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________ LCD projectors use ____________________________________________________________ and are mostly __________________ in quality DLP projectors use ____________________________________________________________ and are _____________________________ in quality. Fax (short for __________________ ) machines ________________________________________ the data is transmitted in __________________ form needs a __________________ or _______________________________ at the receiving end.
6.26 Multifunction

devices (MFD)

MFDs integrate __________________ , __________________ , __________________ and sometimes __________________ .

6.27 Their advantages

are ______________________________________________________________

and ___________________________________________________________________________ , with the disadvantage of ______________________________________________________ . TERMINALS Terminal devices are generally classified: dumb - ______________________________________________________________________ - need to be connected to a __________________________________________________ intelligent - ___________________________________________________________________ - normally a ____________________________________ is used special-purpose, eg.: POS (______________________) terminal, which might be combination of ____________ ____________ and _____________________ , often with a __________________ reader . ATM (____________________________________)

6.29 OUTPUT DEVICES FOR PHYSICALLY CHALLENGED USERS

Some ways physically limited people can have easier-to-understand output include:
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for hearing-impaired users - ______________________________________________________ for visually-impaired - __________________________________________________________ for blind users - ________________________________________________________________ or ________________________________________________________________________

Also to consider (from scsite.com/dc2002, and choose Chapter 6): e-Stamps (in e-Government/Chapter 6 --Government)) Crossword puzzle in Learn It Online Checkpoint Web Links Apply it! topics in ergonomics and eyestrain, printers and sound cards, etc. In Summary a 2 page overview of the chapter

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