Input devices and their advantages and disadvantages

Keyboard: most popular, slow method of input for large amounts of data, inaccurate - easy to make mistakes, need typing skills - hard for beginners

Mouse: used to issue instructions by making selections, scroll wheel for scrolling through long documents

Joystick/Video game controller: ideal for quick movement, useful for disabled as can be operated by foot, mouth etc.

Tracker ball: for disabled people or very young children who find it hard to use a mouse

Touch pad: takes longer to do tasks

Microphone: allows sound to be converted into data. Voice recognition software is used to interpret sounds into words, can tell computer what to do, dictate documents directly into word or email, can use for Internet phone calls which is cheaper

Remote controls: issue instructions/commands to ICT systems

Scanners: scan photos into documents, optical character recognition software is required to scan the text into word documents to be able to recognise the characters

Digital still camera: memory cards store images, can transfer pictures to the computer, high resolution images use more dots so more storage space

Digital video camera:store images digitally, can capture still/moving

Webcams: images transmitted to computer and stored in suitable grpahics format, allows videoconferencing, check weather, parents can check on their children in nursery, check on them at home

Sensors:able to sense quantities e.g, temp, pressure, light, signals picked up and then analysed by computer, record data over long time (burglar alarms, central heating systems)

Touch screen: easy to use, ideal for public information systems

Magnetic ***** readers:read data stored in magnetic *****s on plastic cards, reading data off of credit cards, access to computers/control

MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface): a way of connecting and getting two devices to communicate with each other, can send signals to electronic devices to send back to computer hardware so that signals can be stored and modified

Interactive whiteboards: able to detect presence of finger/pen on screen

Barcode readers:using a series of light and dark bars of different widths to enter a code that is usually printed underneath the bar code, system can determine: country of origin, manufacturer, name, price, recording of goods in supermarets, luggage labelling. ADV= faster, more accurate, low printing cost DIS= only numbers, expensive

Optical mark recognition/reader (OMR): user shading in marks on a form, lottery tickets

Optical character recognition reader (OCR): scan image of characters on document, able to recognise shape of individual characters, fast compared to typing, not good at recognising handwriting

Graphics tablet: draw/write on tablet and it appears on the computer screen