what are screen savers for?

[peterhoang2002]

What are screen savers for? Are they just to look "good" when your not using the comp?
is there any other purpose to them? I actually find them quite annoying especially when im watching a movie and if im not using the computer, its turned off anyways.

 

[Slider19]

To save the screen. In the early days of CRTs, screens would get burned in if they displayed the same screen for too long. Most new CRT's don't get burn in unless you keep them turned on for 24/7. LCD's also rarely get permanent "burn-in".

 

[jpmkm]

Screensavers are pretty much obsolete now. Back in the olden days, an image could be "burned in" to a crt if it was left on the screen long enough, so screensavers were intended to constantly move things around the screen so that nothing stayed in one place long enough to burn in. You don't really need them now. I set all my monitors to just shut off after a period of time rather than mess with a screensaver.

 

[peterhoang2002]

I set all my monitors to just shut off after a period of time rather than mess with a screensaver.

why didnt they just set to turn-off in the old days instead of using a screen saver? Turning them off would prevent this "burn-in" as well wouldnt it and also save energy.

 

[jpmkm]

why didnt they just set to turn-off in the old days instead of using a screen saver? Turning them off would prevent this "burn-in" as well wouldnt it and also save energy.

We didn't have fancy things like automatic power management and DPMS and such back then. A lot of people did turn off their monitors when they weren't using them. Hell, we even turned off our computer each time we finished using it. Businesses with several computers and computer-ignorant employees were a problem, though. It was much easier to just throw a screensaver on there then to have to try to get employees to turn off their monitor whenever they weren't using it. Plus there were awesome screensavers like the After Dark collection which made people want to sit there and just watch the screensaver for a while.

 

[The_Engineer]

... Plus there were awesome screensavers like the After Dark collection which made people want to sit there and just watch the screensaver for a while.

After Dark Forever!

umm anyone know if I can find this somewhere? I'm sick of the windows logon screensaver. its the only one of the defaults I can stand. (I still use a CRT, and I love it and don't ever want it to get burnt in only burnt out some day.)

 

[jpmkm]

After Dark Forever!

umm anyone know if I can find this somewhere? I'm sick of the windows logon screensaver. its the only one of the defaults I can stand. (I still use a CRT, and I love it and don't ever want it to get burnt in only burnt out some day.)

For the record, most modern CRTs don't have a problem with burnin(at least not to the effect of old CRTs).

 

[The_Engineer]

For the record, most modern CRTs don't have a problem with burnin(at least not to the effect of old CRTs).

Yeah... but I don't wanna test the waters.. and prove that info wrong... ya know?

 

[jpmkm]

Yeah... but I don't wanna test the waters.. and prove that info wrong... ya know?

Not really any waters to test. I think the millions of other CRTs in use today provide enough data points that one more isn't going to change things. Granted, if you had your brightness all the way up and you left the same image on your screen for a week then you might get a bit of burnin. Anyway, I bet you could find a complete after dark collection or something on the $5 rack anywhere that sells software. If it is even still being sold. You might be able to download it somewhere, but we can't really discuss that here. A really awesome screensaver(if you don't mind giving up some cpu cycles while it is running) is electricsheep.

 

[Icheb]

why didnt they just set to turn-off in the old days instead of using a screen saver? Turning them off would prevent this "burn-in" as well wouldnt it and also save energy.

That's not the only reason. There just needs to be something on the monitor that doesn't change a lot (a current example would be the Windows taskbar) and you would have a picture of that on your screen all the time.

 

[Lethal]

I set my monitor to just go into stand-by after 15 minutes.

I remember my early days on a Mac where you rolled the cursor into one corner to put it to sleep (which was also handy to black the screen out if someone was approaching and you didn't want them to see anything) and into another corner to wake it up.

 

[soulsaver_8229]

i leave my 17 inch crt on all the time, about 22 hours a day with the same background on........i sleep with it on............no burn it to be had......this is a Toshiba business type crt, its not a bad one i only put screensaver on when i leave my house (password protected)


soulsaver_8229

 

[peacetilence]

For those saying modern CRTs don't get burn-in. My Samsung Synmaster 950P got burn-in after using windows XP on it for only 2 years from the windows task bar. I would set it to turn off after 2 hours as well. I have my 2405FPW set to turn off after 15 minutes just to save power and lifespan on the backlights.

 

[r00k]

After Dark Forever!

umm anyone know if I can find this somewhere? I'm sick of the windows logon screensaver. its the only one of the defaults I can stand. (I still use a CRT, and I love it and don't ever want it to get burnt in only burnt out some day.)

http://www.computerhope.com/software/after.htm#05 page that has info on the after dark softwares

I found it on ebay by searching for after dark anniversary -- this seems to be the most current version, made in 2002. There is only one guy selling it, it seems. He has four up.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=182&item=7165139200&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW