Hardware and Peripherals

Hardware means the physical equipment used to create and work on documents: the parts you can touch. This includes the components inside a computer, such as the processor, memory and display, the devices you plug in, and non-electronic tools such as pens and paper.

A peripheral is a device that plugs into a computer, such as a mouse, keyboard, scanner or printer. A peripheral is always hardware, but not all hardware is a peripheral. The webcam and speakers built into a laptop are hardware even though nothing was plugged in to add them.

Three groups of hardware for planning work

• Input devices put data into the computer. A keyboard types text, a mouse selects items, a graphics tablet draws, and a scanner captures an existing picture or page.
• Output devices present the work so you can judge it. A display shows the document on screen and speakers let you check recorded sound.
• Non-electronic drawing materials are hardware too, because pens, pencils, rulers and paper are physical tools. They are used to sketch layouts and jot ideas by hand before anything is typed or drawn on screen.

For example, imagine you are planning a four-panel comic strip about a school trip. You sketch the rough panels with a pencil on paper, type the speech bubbles with a keyboard, and check the final colours on a printed proof from a printer. Paper, keyboard and printer are all hardware, but each does a different job.

All three groups are physical equipment used at different stages of planning, so a document can move from a hand-drawn sketch to a typed and displayed digital version.