6.1 Computer Hardware Components & Equipment Characteristics

6.1 Computer Hardware Components & Equipment Characteristics

[!NOTE] NALS PP Exam Blueprint Focus: The Part 2 outline devotes an entire heading to Technology: Computers, and it enumerates hardware components (central processing unit, input devices, output devices, storage devices) and equipment characteristics (disk drives, display monitors, keyboards, memory, printers) as named topics. The vocabulary in the outline is deliberately generic, and questions test functional classification rather than current product knowledge.

The Input-Process-Output-Storage Model

Every computing device, from a scanning station to a courtroom presentation cart, performs four functions. Classifying a device correctly means asking which function it performs and which way the data flows.

Some devices are both. A touchscreen accepts input and displays output. A multifunction device scans (input), prints (output), and holds a job queue (storage). A network interface both sends and receives.

The Central Processing Unit

The central processing unit (CPU) is the component that executes instructions. It is sometimes called the processor or, informally and imprecisely, the "brain" of the computer. Its two classical subunits:

• The arithmetic logic unit performs calculations and logical comparisons.
• The control unit fetches instructions, decodes them, and directs the flow of data among the other components.

Processing capacity is described by clock speed (cycles per second, expressed in gigahertz) and by core count (the number of independent processing units on the chip). A multi-core processor executes several instruction streams concurrently, which is what makes it practical to run a document review platform, a transcript viewer, and a video deposition simultaneously.

Memory Versus Storage

This is the distinction most often tested, and it is genuinely consequential in practice.

Read-only memory (ROM) is a third category: non-volatile memory holding the firmware that starts the machine, written at manufacture and not ordinarily changed by the user.

The practical consequence: a brief being drafted lives in RAM until it is saved. A power failure destroys everything since the last save, which is why autosave intervals are a records-management control rather than a convenience setting.

Storage Devices and Disk Drives

Capacity runs kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, each roughly a thousand times the last. A single scanned page of discovery is measured in hundreds of kilobytes; a document production in a mid-size commercial case is measured in gigabytes.

[!WARNING] The flash drive problem: A USB drive holding client documents that leaves the office in a coat pocket is a confidentiality incident waiting to happen. Firms address it with encryption requirements, port restrictions, or outright prohibition, and a paralegal should never move client data onto unencrypted removable media without authorization.

Input Devices in Legal Work

• Keyboard — the primary text input device. Layout variants (QWERTY and Dvorak) and ergonomic designs are the characteristics NALS lists.
• Pointing devices — mouse, trackpad, trackball, stylus.
• Scanner — converts paper to image. The two characteristics that matter for legal work are duplex capability (both sides in one pass) and optical character recognition (OCR), which converts a page image into searchable text. A production scanned without OCR is a stack of pictures that cannot be searched.
• Digital dictation recorder — captures attorney dictation for transcription.
• Signature pad — captures a handwritten signature electronically.
• Microphone and camera — required for remote depositions, remote hearings, and, as noted in the exam-delivery section of this guide, for the PP examination itself.

Output Devices and Their Characteristics

Display monitors are described by screen size measured diagonally, resolution (pixel count), refresh rate, and panel technology. Dual monitors are standard in document-intensive practice because a paralegal comparing a deposition transcript to an exhibit needs both visible at once.

Printers divide into two families:

Printer characteristics include pages per minute (speed), dots per inch (resolution), duplex capability, paper-tray capacity, and whether the device is networked. A multifunction device or MFD combines printing, scanning, copying, and faxing in one unit — and, importantly for confidentiality, usually stores images of processed documents on an internal drive that must be wiped before the device is returned or disposed of.

Plotters produce oversize output such as engineering drawings and demonstrative trial exhibits.

Peripherals, Ports & Connections

A peripheral is any device attached to the computer rather than integral to it. Connections are made through ports — USB, HDMI, Ethernet, and audio jacks — or wirelessly through Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. An uninterruptible power supply sits between the wall and the machine, providing enough battery to save work and shut down cleanly during an outage. In a records-heavy office it is a data-integrity device, not a luxury.