The eye candy
Next on your list are the video card and the monitor. Together, these two parts display everything from your e-mail to your latest financial figures to all those killer Webpages (and don’t forget those flashy enemy Quarkians you need to disintegrate).
All video cards have their own special, onboard RAM modules; the more RAM, the more colors and detail the card can display. Today’s state-of-the-art video cards also help speed up your computer while it displays 3-D graphics or digital video. The video card performs most of the display work itself, giving your CPU a well-deserved rest. (Note that many of today’s motherboards have a built-in video card, so you might not need a separate card if you’re not interested in playing the latest games.) Although you can certainly find many manufacturers of video cards, the actual chipsets used in the cards are built by either AMD (originally ATI) and NVIDIA.
Monitors have screen areas that typically retrieve pictures range from 15–24 inches (measured diagonally across the case). You can go even larger if you crave that much onscreen space, or you can put two monitors side by side for a larger virtual desktop. Naturally, the larger the monitor, the more expensive. Today’s liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors use less electricity and emit very little radiation compared with the“antique” CRT (or tube) monitors used a decade ago.
The places for plugs
Your power cord isn’t the only connection that you need on the outside of your computer. For example, you also need to attach a mouse and a keyboard (unless you go wireless), and you might also want to access a portable MP3 player, a gamepad, a digital camera, a printer, or a scanner. These days, virtually all the ports (the connectors so proudly displayed on the back of your PC) are built into the motherboard, but you can install new ports for external devices separately.
You can point and click with things other than a mouse, such as a trackball, a touchpad, or a drawing tablet. A mouse is practically a requirement for Windows(although you can still navigate strictly from the keyboard if necessary).
Even the traditional keyboard has changed. Ergonomically shaped keyboards are photo recovery for Mac designed to make typing easier on your hands, wrists, and forearms. And both Windows XP and Windows Vista recognize two or three Windows-specific keys to activate the Start button and display menus in an application. (Thank goodness Bill Gates can’t add new letters to the alphabet.)
Your computer also needs at least one universal serial bus (USB) port to use many external devices. For example, most digital cameras connect via USB ports, as do virtually all printers on the market today.
Oh, and don’t forget your Ethernet network port. Just about every motherboard available today has a built-in Ethernet card, and some even include built-in wireless network hardware. For all the details on building your own network (or connecting your new PC to an existing network).
You might also see a FireWire port. Although these are more common on a Mac than on a PC, you could run into them from time to time. As a quick and handy primer, Figure 1-4 shows what the three ports look like in comparison. Even if the shape throws you, they’re typically marked with a symbol.
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post reproduce from:http://repaireordinateur.blogspot.com/2010/11/le-plaisir-des-yeux-et-des-lieux-pour.html