Screensavers Evolution - From Necessity To Passion

By Author: Melanie Hudson
Total Articles: 15
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Rare old school IT professionals still remember the practical value of early screensavers. The cradle of modern computers in early 1990 was also the cradle of early PC monitors.

The time humanity was spending behind of a computer screen has been skyrocketing since and it still is. The need for screensavers on those first truly personal computers was of a pure practical nature. Today their role is more or less enhancing the PC user experience, but back then their primary goal was protecting your hardware.

The standpoint of science back then could not efficiently solve some crucial deficiencies. If you have left your monitor on for a long time, the screen could literally freeze forever. 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. Regardless the fact that monitors quickly became a mass production product, there still were no cheap and reliable answers to that issue.

Monitor production companies could not provide any satisfactory breakthrough that would deal with that. A piece of programming code solved the biggest ...
... lack in monitors of 20th century.

The era of screensavers began. It was just a matter of time for screensaver providers to realize there could be much more to screensavers than just simple words randomly flying across the screen.

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. Today there are no computer monitors that would suffer a phosphorus burn in even if you leave them on for days.

Modern hardware is so intertwined with the software that each PC screen can be easily adjusted or turned off when you stop working. Screensavers are the statement of individuality and they will stay in for a long time.

The competition among screensavers has become a fierce business on the web. If not at least one of basic human emotions are affected, a screen saver is likely to pass into oblivion. 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. A look at interactive screensavers with animation reveals the future lines of modern animated screensavers.

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.

Huge amount of screensavers available for free on the web are not watering down the initial heat of creativeness that has to be paid for. We live in the society where all payable software solutions have their free alternatives. 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. Whichever way the future of screensavers my take us; it seems the user will continue to enjoy free products for a long time to come.

We can all look forward to new ideas which will soon be conquering PC screens worldwide.