Computer peripheral is a term that is sometimes referred exclusively for devices that are connected externally, generally those that are connected through some form of computer bus like the USB. Its most common examples include joysticks, printers and scanners.
However in a mixed opinion, some people say, internal devices like the video capture cards are not really computer peripherals since they are added inside the computer case. In their opinion the term peripherals is exclusively reserved for devices that are hooked up externally to the computer. It is arguable however whether PCMCIA cards qualify as peripherals under this biased definition. Because there are some hard wares that go fully inside the laptop, while some others like WiFi cards, have external appendages.
Due to these deliberations, the term is hardly used these days. Earlier these were used to refer to things like floppy disk drives and modems. Now a day’s most of these devices are integrated inside the computer's case. Over and above the external devices typically function on their own such as mp3 players and cell phones.
The common peripherals include.
• Storage: CD, CD ROM, CD writer, DVD, DVD ROM, DVD writer, HD DVD, HD DVD ROM, HD DVD Writer, etc. Other examples in this category include USB flash drive, tape drive, floppy disk, and punch card. In the non removable category are the disk drives, disk array controller, etc.
• Input: In this category devices like keyboard, pointing devices, mouse, trackball, joystick, touch screen, game pad are included.
The devices like the power cord/ transformer, microphone, brain computer interface, image scanner, computer terminal, computer speech recognition, webcam, digitizing tablet, barcode reader are also included in this category.
• Output: For the printing purposes the devices that are used like the plotter, printer, Braille embosser, etc, the devices for the sound like the computer speech synthesis, sound card, speakers, etc are the output peripherals.
The devices for the visuals like the digital camera, graphics card, monitor, the devices for networking like the modem and the network card, expansion devices like the docking station, etc are other output peripheral devices.
Many online computer shops, are giving discount on every purchase of computer peripheral item.