Printers that produce high quality printouts. They operate like a copy machine, using lasers and toner to produce an image. Laser printers that print in black are the most popular, but color lasers are also available. The cost of toner per page is much less than the cost of ink per page for an ink jet printers. At one time laser printers were primarily used by small businesses, but dramatic price reductions have made them available for everyone. Many people now own both an ink jet and a laser printer. They use the ink jet, with its higher per page costs, for printing photos and color documents and the black laser printer for everyday printing.

Display screens used for digital watches and most portable computers are Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs). LCD displays have two sheets of polarizing material. These sheets are separated by a liquid crystal solution. An electrical current passing through the liquid causes the crystal to align allowing or preventing light from passing through. Therefore LCD screens can be lightened or darkened by applying/removing current. Nearly all modern flat-panel displays use LCD technologies, although new technologies such as the amazingly realistic OLED screens are poised to take their place in the near future.

These displays are brighter than LCD and more highly colored, usually red or blue.

A computer that is free of old-type ports is said to be legacy free. This term appears often in computer advertisements. The phrase basically indicates that the computer has only the newer USB ports and does not contain any of the older parallel or serial ports. Since USB ports are faster, they are preferable; however, some older printers, scanners, cameras, and other peripherals have only serial or parallel connectors. In order to connect such a peripheral to a USB port, a special converter is needed. These converters generally work well, but sometimes getting a parallel or serial device to work on a USB connection may be difficult. In certain instances, these peripherals simply refuse to work with legacy free computers. It is best to use USB enabled peripherals with legacy free computers. Some legacy free computers also have another new connection called FireWire (IEEE1394).

This is the photographic darkroom of the digital age. In fact, it is sometimes called the Digital Darkroom. It is the work area where a photographer does his digital photography editing and organizing. It generally consists of a computer workstation with all the necessary computer hardware and software. 

There is also a software program by Adobe called Photoshop Lightroom that speeds up a photographer’s workflow.

An example of a lossy compression from the music world is the MP3 file that is produced from ripping a CD track. The resulting file is smaller, but has lost some of the detail of the original recording. While most of us may not be able to hear the difference, if compressing such a file over and over again can significantly degrade it. In the world of digital imaging, MP3 files are also a lossy format.

To hang out at a message board, discussion forum, or chat room reading the messages or chat comments without contributing to the conversation or to the messages.