From Guardian to Entertainer - the History of Screensavers

Rare old school IT professionals still remember the practical value of early screensavers. As the Cold war was starting to loose on heat, the first personal computers were born.

The time humanity was spending behind of a computer screen has been skyrocketing since and it still is. The mission of the first screensaver was clear and simple. Today their role is more or less enhancing the PC user experience, but back then their primary goal was protecting your hardware.

The cause of the problem was technologies used in monitors of that time. PC screens that were left on for hours were subject to a danger of permanent damage. A phenomenon called phosphoric burn would cause the last picture on your screen to burn into the surface of the monitor and stay there forever. Technology could not cope with that phenomenon so another kind of invention has been searched for.

Relying on PC screen evolution to bring some answers was not an option; other methods would have to be tried out. A piece of programming code solved the biggest lack in monitors of 20th century.

The era of screensavers began. At the start it was just letters or simple signs cruising through screen or bouncing around.

Those first windows operating systems still had to cope with monitors which development was staggering well behind what motherboards and computer chips were experiencing. By the time majority of worlds monitors were in color and phosphorus burn in became a myth from the past, screensavers have already became most downloaded software in the world. Modern PC monitors are all immune to what once presented a serious threat for them.

It would certainly be ecologically more responsible to use the power saving function which turns off inactive PC and darkens or turns of the monitor as well. However you look at it, leaving a blank screen when going out for a coffee is just no fun at all.

If once a couple of short hickuping sentences were enough, today a screensaver has to be at least partly animated to be selected by PC users. The direct user experience has become the deciding factor. Evolution of this software has shown that addressing our feelings is the way to go. From trivial graphic and programmable fonts to photo slideshows, animations and sound, screensavers seem to evolve in a completely new media.

Information highways are another reason why the screen saver evolution seems to be going on faster than ever. Animated screensavers are for example becoming more and more similar to a movie.

Animated or slideshow, downloaded or self made, screensavers will continue to come in all sorts of packaging, but they will be more and more niche oriented in terms of themes as well as in terms of different features.

Free animated screensavers, free funny screensavers, all those freebie searches on the web seem not to harm continuous investments in better, more interesting and even more interactive screensavers. Searching for free alternatives to payable software solutions has become a global obsession. Typing into a google words for free animated screensavers will produce millions of hits.

Pay nothing and get a good product seems to work.

The money for making new screensavers comes from free software providers which attach their software into the package with the downloaded screensaver. Today free animated screensavers are topping the popularity charts, tomorrow free interactive screensavers will probably take their place, but however the product changes, words like free and screensaver will keep dominating all search engines.

For the time being the market of supply and demand for free screensavers is in balance and the ingenious financing scheme is ensuring some even more exciting products for the future.

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