Hardware is categorised into input, output and storage devices.
Mother board is a printed circuit board (PCB) which connects to the main components of a computer. Motherboard always include main bus that’s used to transfer data between hardware components however, some of the components may be the integral part of the motherboard, i.e. Universal serial bus(USB) ports, network port,integrated graphic cards etc.
Random access memory (RAM)
Random access memory(RAM) is a memory that is used to store currently active programs and data. The more data that is available to the computer, the more data and programs can be used at the same time. RAM is volatile, meaning the content will be lost when the power is off(one of the reason why the content you are working on might be deleted if you haven’t saved it into secondary storage, RAM is the type of memory that can be read and written to.
Read only memory (ROM) is the type of memory that can be read but not written to, ROM is non-volatile, meaning the content will be retained even when there is no power (because ROM is powered by a small long-life battery).
Graphic card is also known as a video card, display adapter, or graphics adapter. It generates signals needed to display the output image from the computer, sometimes graphic card is integrated to computer and does not require a separate card. Graphic performance can be improved as a separate processor can be used for graphics.
Sound card generates signals needed to output a sound from computer to the speaker or set of speakers. Sound card have single output for audio(green socket), a single input for microphone(red socket) and a single input for line level devices(Blue socket). Separate sound card that connects with separate motherboard expansion is necessary for high quality or surround sound-which enable multiple output for front, rear, centre, and sub-woofer speakers.
Hard disk drive (HDD) is the most common form of secondary storage for a computer do to its relatively low cost per Mega Byte(MB). Data stored on hard disk is non volatile.
Solid state drive (SSD) is another secondary storage drive and it is also non volatile.
Cloud or storage cloud is a storage space of which the services are hosted over the internet and not in the same physical location as the computer is being used. Data is stored on banks or servers that are accessed remotely. Physical device where data is being stored is owned by the hosting company rather than person or organisation using the data.
Monitor is a device which enables the visualisation of computer’s output, monitor connects to the graphic card.
Keyboard is a device that consists of buttons used to input texts or to control part of an interface, some countries have different buttons on keyboards used i.e. China has more buttons due to their alphabets.
Mouse is a pointing device used to manipulate computer screen.
Printer is an output device which produces hard copy (Printout) for computer (usually onto paper), some printer also include scanner (this is what you call MFP or Multi-function peripheral.
Speaker is a device which provide sound output and usually connects with the green socket of sound card.
Camera captures still and moving images(Video) which can be then stored into computer, camera attached to a computer is called webcam.
Scanner is an input device which capture a 2D document in the form of an image.
Optical character reader (OCR) is the recognition of printed or written text characters by a computer. This involves photo-scanning of the text character-by-character, analysis of the scanned-in image, and then translation of the character image into character codes, such as ASCII, commonly used in data processing. In OCR processing, the scanned-in image or bitmap is analysed for light and dark areas in order to identify each alphabetic letter or numeric digit. When a character is recognised, it is converted into an ASCII code. Special circuit boards and computer chips designed expressly for OCR are used to speed up the recognition process.
Magnetic ink character reader
Magnetic ink character reader (MICR) is a technology used to verify the legitimacy or originality of paper documents, especially checks. Special ink, which is sensitive to magnetic fields, is used in the printing of certain characters on the original documents. Information can be encoded in the magnetic characters.
Optical mark reader (OMR) is a method of entering data into a computer system. Optical Mark Readers reads pencil or pen marks made in pre-defined positions on paper forms as responses to questions or tick list prompts. The OMR data entry system contains the information to convert the presence or absence of marks into a computer data file.
Barcode reader also called a price scanner or point-of-sale ( POS ) scanner, is a hand-held or stationary input device used to capture and read information contained in a bar code . A barcode reader consists of a scanner , a decoder (either built-in or external), and a cable used to connect the reader with a computer. Because a barcode reader merely captures and translates the barcode into numbers and/or letters, the data must be sent to a computer so that a software application can make sense of the data.
Pen drive also referred as USB flash drive is a portable device which allows user to transfer data (text, images, videos etc) to and from computer quickly. Users can easily read and write the data on the Pen Drive by plugging it into the USB port on the computer. Pen Drives are quite compact and can fit easily into the pocket; they run without battery and draw power from the USB connection itself. Both Floppy disks and CDs are now being gradually replaced by Pen Drive as a preferred means of data storage. Its because latter offers mass data transfer and storage capability and at a much faster rate.
Portable HDD is An external hard drive is a storage device located outside of a computer that is connected through a USB cable or wireless connection. An external hard drive is usually used to store media that a user needs to be portable, for backups, and when the internal drive of the computer is already at its full memory capacity. These devices have a high storage capacity compared to flash drives and are mostly used for backing up numerous computer files or serving as a network drive to store shared content.External hard drives are also known as removable hard drives.
Blu-ray disc drive is an optical disc format designed to display high definition video and store large amounts of data.Blu-ray is the successor to DVD. The format's name comes from the fact that a blue laser reads from and writes to the disc rather than the red laser of DVD players. The blue laser has a 405 manometer (nm) wavelength that can focus more tightly than the red lasers used for writable DVD. As a consequence, a Blu-ray disc can store much more data in the same 12 centimetre space.
see also :Magnetic tape, CD and DVD
Memory card or flash memory is a storage device mostly used in digital camera.