What are input devices? Examples of input devices.

• Mouse
• Keyboard
• Joystick
• Touchpad/trackpad
• Touchscreen
• Scanner
• Digital Camera

The computer mouse is very important in the use of computers as it is regarded as one of the most used input devices. It is used for scrolling, clicking, right clicking, highlighting, double clicking and drag and dropping. Scrolling is done using the scroll wheel, clicking using the left mouse button, right clicking using the right mouse button, double clicking by pressing the left mouse button twice, highlighting by holding down the left mouse button and moving the cursor over the items to be highlighted and also dragging and dropping using the left mouse button. 

The computer keyboard’s main input function is to be used for typing. It helps the computer user to input text, characters, numbers, symbols and others. There is a virtual keyboard with the name “On screen keyboard” which can be found and used on most of the recent Windows but it is manipulated by the use of the computer mouse.

Joystick is a very popular input device when it comes to the computer gaming world and this is because it is used for playing computer games.

Touchpad is just the laptop’s version of a mouse. It functions as a mouse for laptops even though the mouse can still be connected and used perfectly with the laptop either with a USB cord or through wireless connection.

Touchscreen is the technology largely used in the production of smartphones which enables the user to manipulate the phone using the screen of the phone. So touchscreen is simply a screen that can be used to manipulate a computer through touches of the fingers. 

A scanner is used to input a softcopy of a hardcopy into the computer’s system. Provided you have a speech on a paper printed out for days and you have identified a mistake, there is no need to retype the whole speech again. The speech will be scanned into the computer’s system, mistakes rectified and the speech can be printed out again. That is how useful the scanner as an input device is.

After taking many pictures or videos with a digital camera, it has to be connected to a computer by any means possible to input the pictures or videos into the computer to be worked on in terms of editing.

Whenever you think of input devices, remember they are used to input or send data or information into the computer system.