Types of Output

Output Device is a peripheral device that allows a computer to communicate information to humans or another machine. It transfer computer data into usable form. As already mentioned the output device translates the machine level data to human understandable form.

Output can be of two forms

a.                   Understood by humans

b.                  To secondary storage device that hold the data to be used as input for further processing

by computer.

The human understood output can be of two forms

a.                   Soft copy output

b.                  Hard copy output

Soft copy output

Soft copy output refers to the output, which is temporary in nature. The most common soft copy output is monitor. It is a transient form of output i.e. the output on the screen is lost when the computer is turned off.

Hard copy output

It is permanent in nature. It refers to the output that is generated on permanent medium such as paper of film. The most common hard copy outputs are printer and plotter.