The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : Screen Savers: Still Fun, but No Longer Essential

The only thing fuzzy about today’s high-resolution computer monitors is the thinking of the people who sit in front of them. For instance, many users still believe those clever screen savers, with their free-floating images of flying toasters or humpback whales, are somehow saving endangered screens.

Error message: Most likely, they aren’t.

Not that screen savers, one of the hottest software niches of the last year or two, don’t deliver on their promise. They do exactly what they claim to do, most of them in a delightful way. It’s just that, as with practically everything in personal computing nowadays, the screen saver’s raison d’etre is being overtaken by technological advances.

“The biggest benefit that screen savers provide is that they are fun to look at,” said Jim Schwabe, vice president of the graphics business unit at NEC Technologies Inc., a major player in computer hardware.

Screen savers were designed to prevent permanent phosphor damage that could occur when an unchanging image accumulated too many on-screen hours. They did so by replacing stagnant images with dynamic intermissions. So when people left their computers on around the clock (said to be better for delicate circuits than turning them off and on often), the screen saver would kick in--with stars, toasters or tropical fish--to protect the screen from an electronic tattooing.

The problem could leave a ghostlike image, such as is standard on automated teller machines at banks. But, according to many computer experts, the risk of phosphor burn in home PCs and most office computers is now small--especially with newer monitors.

In the past, when DOS ruled the PC world, its monochrome text displayed on a black background boosted the risk of screen burn. The emergence of color monitors as the industry standard made burn-in less likely to occur, since the color images disperse light over a larger phosphor area. Now, dynamic Windows and Apple Desktop interfaces use black text on white background, so most of the screen is lit and a single image is rarely displayed for long.