A device, from the Latin dispositus ("arranged"), is a machine or system that performs certain actions; that is, it is "ready" to carry out certain actions.
Exit, on the other hand, is the action and effect of going out or getting out. This verb refers to going from one place to another, going from the inside to the outside or getting rid of some annoyance.
These definitions help to understand the concept of the output device, a notion used in computer science. The first thing to keep in mind is that the input / output is linked to the interfaces used by the units of an information system to establish communication: the input is the signal received by the unit and the output is the signal it sends.
An output device, therefore, is one that emits a signal with information. In this sense we can mention the printer (which receives information from a computer and produces a printed output on paper), the monitor (displays the data on the screen), the headphones (emits sounds so that they are heard by a person) and the speaker (plays sounds to the environment).
For example: "My computer has several output devices since I need to have the information in different formats" , "For me, the printer is not an essential output device since I usually work on a network, without having a physical copy of the data ” , “ It does not help me to have a computer without an output device ” .
Among all the output devices, the most important and most widely used worldwide is the monitor; it is the component that allows us to visualize the information in an attractive, easy to understand and (which most differentiates it from printouts on paper) animated . Users often forget that much of what they see on screen when using a computer or mobile device was made simply to facilitate their interaction with the data, with the truly essential, which could well be expressed with a fraction of the processing and the memory.
The monitor is a basic output device for many in any device, although it is an exclusive element, since it is not useful for a blind person. There are two possibilities for them, which many use together, and which in turn represent two other output devices: speech synthesizers through speakers and Braille displays.
The first alternative is a tool that many operating systems are included in their basic package and allows the user to hear the content that they would otherwise see on the screen: the text of a document, the results of an Internet search, the options of a menu, etcetera. It is handled through voice commands, for which it is usually necessary to go through a calibration process, so that the program has the necessary information to understand the person's accent.
The Braille displays, also simply called devices electronic Braille, played through a series of small bumps mobile textual content of the computer. While speech synthesizers are more useful for navigating through different windows and applications, reading a digital book is probably preferable through one of these screens.
Finally, it should be noted that some devices carry out both operations (input and output), such as a network card or a modem.