Screensavers... a thing of the past?

Back in the early days of computers, screensavers had exploded into the scene when it came to the chunky CRT monitors that came with them where they would suffer burn-in issues and these things, whether plain or animated or packed with sound, would be there to prevent this as this was their main purpose until they became a novelty thing. Now, in the present day, I think they're not as popular as they used to be and that computers and laptops now come with the plain ol' lock screen. So let's discuss... are screensavers now considered an obsolete element in the world of technology, or is it still alive? Also, do you still have a screensaver for yours?

For me, I've long had a screensaver (which is just the Ribbons one, amongst the default ones) until today, I decided to do away with it as I really see no point in it now and for some reason, a system process usually starts up whenever it's on and it had been driving me nuts and therefore hogging the CPU unnecessarily. It doesn't always happen but still annoying and that I have to go to Task Manager to stop it manually (which is of an svchost, rundll or even the TrustedInstaller ones. Don't even know if Windows Update is trying to load or not). Even so, I still have the laptop to enter sleep mode if it's idling for about an hour or so.

Comments

  • OLED burns in, so screensavers might have been useful there; but it seems people just set the timeout to blank to shorter intervals. (I think there might be special patterns to use to try to counteract burn in though.)

  • What about TFT? Would that be vulnerable to burn-ins too? That's the kind of screen my laptop has.

  • Not very much. IPS has ghosting as well as burn-in, but that's temporary, and it's hard to burn in an IPS panel.

  • I use XScreenSaver for the huge collection of screensavers, and because it's more secure than most other screenlockers on X11.

  • edited January 2018

    I was thinking of doing a software spotlight on screen savers eventually. There is quite a bit of history going back to automatic screen blankers on early TVs and terminals, and various manually run "dazzlers".

    Reminds me of one of my old favorites, Razzle Dazzle:

    Point is, people still like their flying toaster screen savers even if they don't "save" anything :)

    Edit: did not expect the forum to automatically embed the video given just the link. Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

  • Man, I used to love that 3D maze one. After coming back to my computer I would usually just watch it for a while.

  • I noticed that most modern PCs don't have screensavers turned on by default. Instead, they just go right to a blank screen.

    @Totengeist said:
    Man, I used to love that 3D maze one. After coming back to my computer I would usually just watch it for a while.

    I used to love that one too. I also had a screensaver from Geico, back when they had their "so easy, even a caveman could do it" commercials. The screensaver featured dancing cavemen. I think I actually have the installer for it somewhere, even though I haven't used it in years.

  • I know it might sound crazy, but I thought they just removed screensavers in Windows 10.

  • They haven't. You can still have them enables if you want to. It just haves them off by default.

  • @ec_ho said:
    I know it might sound crazy, but I thought they just removed screensavers in Windows 10.

    I didn't even realise windows 8 had them either... I haven't used a screensaver since Vista because it was getting redundant...

  • Back in the early 90s, I knew someone who developed their own "Mystify Your Mind" screensaver for their 286 DOS box using QBasic.

    Johnny Castaway was one I remembered when a friend picked up a used 386.

    Around the same time I recall seeing a fish tank screensaver on the Macintosh LCs at school, though might have been just After Dark.

    I was never really fussed with screensavers, though there was a time I used Microsoft Scenes, and later found a Sports Illustrated screensaver from a magazine disc back around 1998.

    Starting with Windows XP, I began not to bother with them, and they (Microsoft) haven't really updated them since.

  • edited January 2018

    For those of us who have favourite screen savers from the past, it is possible to copy .scr files from older Windows installations to newer ones. For example, you can copy the Flying Windows screensaver from Windows 98 to Windows 8.1.

  • @pixel-perfect said:
    For those of us who have favourite screen savers from the past, it is possible to copy .scr files from older Windows installations to newer ones.

    Should be fine for screensavers made for Windows 95 and up, though any before that won't unless using a 32-bit version of Windows.

  • @pixel-perfect said:
    For those of us who have favourite screen savers from the past, it is possible to copy .scr files from older Windows installations to newer ones.

    Sweet. I was able to put the 3D Maze screensaver on my Windows 7 computer. Unfortunately, it stretches over all of my monitors, so it doesn't really work well.

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