Screensavers - from Evolution to Revolution

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 need for screensavers on those first truly personal computers was of a pure practical nature. It had nothing to do with the computer itself.

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.

For those days a hardware solution simply could not be produced. A piece of programming code solved the biggest lack in monitors of 20th century.

That is when first screensavers saw the light of the day. 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.

We can question ourselves if it makes sense to continue using screensavers while each personal computer today offers an option to turn off monitor automatically when inactive. However you look at it, leaving a blank screen when going out for a coffee is just no fun at all.

Not only has their function changed. The direct user experience has become the deciding factor. Evolution of this software has shown that addressing our feelings is the way to go. Users want TV like experience and are even flirting with latest interactive solutions.

Internet made it possible to spread the newest animated screensavers in matter of seconds all round the globe. A question pops up where to draw the line between a slideshow screensaver, animated screensaver, interactive animated screensaver and a movie.

Turning back to a well known fact that each science evolves into several different scientific directions the evolution of screensavers is also likely to branch into at least 5 equally represented categories of screensavers.

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. Searching for free alternatives to payable software solutions has become a global obsession. All it takes is to check the number of pages in yahoo for free screensavers.

Pay nothing and get a good product seems to work.

For example 90% of free animated screensavers are actually free and financed from users installing free software that comes with each free downloadable 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.

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