A keyboard is an input device.Popular types are the 101-key Enhanced keyboard and the 104-key Windows keyboard. Keyboard keys are arranged into groups. One group is the alphanumeric (letter and numeric) keys that enter letters and digits. Keyboards mostly have the same arrangement for the letter keys. This popular arrangement is referred to as the QWERTY standard, since its top left six keys are Q, W, E, R, T, and Y, respectively. Another key group is the function keys (F1, F2, and so on) that invoke programs and execute commands. Also there is the numeric keypad which looks like a simple calculator and is usually located on the keyboard’s right side. The numeric keypad accelerates handling numbers. In addition, we have cursor-movement (arrow) keys that change the position of the screen cursor (the spot, usually appears as a black box or a vertical line, that marks the position of the character to be typed). A keyboard also have special-purpose keys that are used to provide additional capabilities such as deleting characters, making large jumps in documents, and switching between typing uppercase and lowercase characters.

Most keyboards are connected to the computer through the 6-pin PS/2 connector which is so named because it was first introduced when IBM released its PS/2 microcomputers. The keyboard gets its 5-volt electricity through the connector cable. The cable also passes the data entered to the computer.