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The Secret Truth About Screensavers

Uh-oh. This sounds ominous!  Why would a company that sells screensavers dis them? Mindconnection sells satisfaction, not just products. We think many of our customers would be better off without screensavers. So, we'll tell you why and let you decide if you are one of them.

Where screensavers came from

Before the advent of color monitors, you could burn the phosphors out of a CRT simply by leaving text displayed. Today, you cannot do that. The original screensavers were programs that blanked out the display. That's all they did. Because of the resource requirements, you didn't find many screensavers in the days when 64K of RAM was the norm.

The ones you did have didn't do much.  In the early days of color, the monitors weren't so good and the graphics cards weren't very powerful. So, you might have your screen go to a black on black display or maybe a clock. Even when the 386 was the standard, you usually had to turn the screensaver on manually. You normally did this by typing in a few keystrokes that initiated a batch file. Many users, including the President of Mindconnection, wrote their own screensavers in those days. It was pretty easy to do.


What screensavers are today

Today, screensavers go far beyond black on black displays. The whole idea of a screensaver is to prevent burning a single image into the screen. The likelihood of such an event is remote, but possible, with today's monitors. The typical user doesn't need to worry about damage from not having a screensaver.

It's cheaper just to shut your monitor off, if you are the type who never shuts off the computer. Screensavers do move the images around on the screen, and are like a form of insurance against an exceptionally rare event. You might be more likely to twist your ankle falling off a ladder on the moon than damaging your screen because of no screensaver (providing you have a VGA monitor or better). Screensavers today are almost purely entertainment.

And screensavers are automatic--they initiate on their own, and call subroutines on their own. Screensavers today do everything from scroll some text across your screen to play full-blown movies, complete with sound!

 

How screensavers affect your system

Plain and simple, they hog resources. The DOS variants (Windows 95/98) suffer much more from screensavers than does an operating system like Windows NT. Prior to Windows 95/98, the situation was especially bad, because of the poor memory management inherent in Windows 3.x.

If your machine never runs slowly, never crashes, and never sees an hour glass, don't worry about your screensaver. However, if you are going to do a resource-intensive operation, you'd probably  better disable it. You can try a screensaver and see how it affects your system. You may have resources to spare, and not even notice the drag of the screensaver.

Today's screensavers don't reside in memory. However, the older ones--many of which are still around--do. Those older ones are Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) applications. This means they always reside in memory, taking up space other applications might want to use. This can cause resource shortages (including CPU resource shortages) that will crash your machine. You'd lose anything not saved to your hard drive. Make sure you don't get a TSR screensaver. If you are buying a new one, it's highly unlikely to be a TSR.

Another way a screensaver can affect your system: it may execute during a critical cycle, knocking out a program that is trying to run, say, overnight. Typical applications include programming compilers, relational databases, and website spidering programs. If you are doing any CAD work or graphics work, don't even think of running a screensaver. You may have gotten away with it in the past, but most likely you only think you did. Remember any unexplained crashes? Well, now you have your explanation.

 

When it's OK to use a screensaver

In one of his (yawn) movies, John Travolta, upon hearing bad news, said, "It's a joke, right?" That line almost, but not quite, applies here. You can use a screensaver without ill effect. As long as you are not running anything that is critical or demands resources, you can safely run a screensaver. However, if you run a screensaver on Windows 3.x/95/98, you do need to reboot at least once per day to clean up your memory registers.

 

What type of screensaver should you avoid at all costs

Let's say you would just die without a screensaver. OK, fine. Let's talk about OpenGL. Remember the movie, Terminator 2? Or how about The Abyss? Those special effects came to you courtesy of OpenGL--a very powerful tool that Microsoft uses to run those text marquees you can edit from your settings window.

Don't run an Open GL screensaver--if a normal screensaver is a resource hog, this one is a resource black hole--unless you have resources to burn. Because OpenGL will burn them. The simpler the screensaver, the safer it is to run it. That text marquee is not as simple as it looks (the fact you can change it on the fly gives a pretty strong hint as to its complexity).

Computer Resource Quicklinks

Working the Windows Desktop

The whole desktop approach ignores the fact that a computer's hard drive(s) are the electronic version of a paper filing cabinet. It also ignores the fact that people store a huge amount of files in that system. And it ignores a few dozen other facts relevant to using a computer. It's just a bad approach.

The desktop assumes you don't care what files you actually work on. It opens apps, not files, and this is the pathway to problems. You can inadvertently be revising the wrong thing, if you can even find it in the first place.

What you should do instead is use Windows Explorer. Microsoft tends to hide this, but it should be your standard interface with your computer, unless you don't mind working blind.

You can always right mouse click the Start button to invoke it, but you should add Windows Explorer to your Quick Launch bar and several other menus in Windows.

The default settings for Windows Explorer defy logic. Change these so you can actually see what files you are looking at. Enable it to show you the file extensions (unclick the insane "Hide extensions" box that is, stupidly enough, checked by default though actually there is never any reason to ever check this box). Select the option to show details. Now, you will be able to see your file size, file date, and other useful information. If you right click around a bit, you can find quite a bit of functionality in Windows Explorer.

If you haven't been using this interface previously, make a point of using it now. If you always open files from within Windows Explorer, you will always be able to see all available files and select the right one.

Use Windows Explorer to set up your filing system as if it's a paper filing cabinet. Save all files either on the data drive (dual hard drive machine) or in a folder on a single hard drive machine. Do NOT save files to the default locations. These never make any sense. They are typically within your applications, which is a dumb place to save them. That's how you end up with corrupted data files and it also makes file backups difficult.

For single-drive users, an easy solution is to create a folder called 0files as your top-level data folder. The zero means it will show up at the top of your file list, making things easy for you. Below this folder, create you filing structure. Never store anything at the root of this folder. Think of it as the shell of a five-drawer filing cabinet and don't toss stuff in the bottom. Always put files in folders that are in drawers.

With a good filing structure in place, you will always be able to find your files by simply clicking right to them. So think this out as you go and follow a good taxonomy. It's a much more effective way to work than how the zombies at Microsoft envision people working.

 

Recovering hard drive space

Even with today's huge drives, people sometimes run out of hard drive space. The steps below can recover wasted space.

  • Do a search for *.tmp files. Delete all of them. Then defrag your drive.
  • Do a search for *.bak files. Delete all of them. Then defrag your drive.
    •
  • If you have any *.bmp files, change the format to *.jpg. This will result in radically smaller files. You need an image tool for this; if you don't have one installed already, then skip this step.
  • Set the Properties for the drive to compress files. In Windows Explorer, right mouse click the drive name. Then select Properties. Then select Compress to Save Drive Space. This could take a while, so unless you want your machine tied up for a few hours do this process one folder at a time and then do it for the whole drive.
  • If this issue is for your programs drive, then remove any programs you aren't using. Go to Control Panel | Remove Programs.
  • On your data drive, zip files you aren't using.

There are other steps you can take, but if, at this point, you are still low on disk space you really need to add another hard drive or upgrade one that's in your system. Or, another very cool option, is to add a My Ditto system. See our Review of the Dane my Ditto network server.

   

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