Introduction

Computers have revolutionized the way our culture works. No longer do we perform all our own calculations, armed with nothing more than a slide rule. The reaches of technology are so far that a farmer can wake up in the morning, retrieve his weather updates, factor out the seed he will need to plant an acre crop, head out to the barn to hook up the cows to the milking machines that then calculate the volume of milk provided, and end the day by paying his bills online and emailing a digital photograph of an ailing cow to his veterinarian. A single machine can do the work of many people, yet there must be at least one person putting ideas, strategies, plans, and information into the machine to process the information and receive a result.

The way that people interact with computers is through input/output devices. This chapter looks at how to configure a variety of I/O devices, such as a scanner or a printer. In addition, this chapter also covers the implementation of multimedia devices, and wireless and network adapters, and their device drivers. The final portion of this chapter reviews how to take advantage of a symmetrical multiprocessor (SMP) computer by enabling multiprocessor support in Windows XP Professional.