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. Back than in late 20th century screensavers were born for a simple reason. It had nothing to do with the computer itself.
The standpoint of science back then could not efficiently solve some crucial deficiencies. PC screens that were left on for hours were subject to a danger of permanent damage. The letters on your screen got burned into the structure of the screen surface and stayed there for good. 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 fantastic non-hardware product swiped away every monitor related worry of those days.
That is when first screensavers saw the light of the day. 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. Personal computers were experiencing renaissance in terms of usage - what was initially developed for work turned out to be extremely useful for entertainment and fun. Nowadays you can hardly find any computer screen in use that would not be technologically advanced enough to prevent any possibility of a permanent screen freeze.
Modern hardware is so intertwined with the software that each PC screen can be easily adjusted or turned off when you stop working. However you look at it, leaving a blank screen when going out for a coffee is just no fun at all.
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. One has to be at least shocked, touched, relaxed, entertained or brought to laugh in order to categorize a screensaver as successful. It started with simple graphics and came to highly advanced software.
World Wide Web opened its doors to all sorts of software that brings most unbelievable solutions to ones PC monitor. 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.
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. Freeware society is taking its toll but screensavers seem to be immune. 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.
Funds for screensavers are provided by third party providers who develop their own free software and offer it to screensaver providers to include it into their screensaver installation package and are compensated for each download or for a specific action required from the final user of the screensaver. Following the pace of new screensavers available online, it is hard to imagine the developers will stop at free animated screensavers.
We can all look forward to new ideas which will soon be conquering PC screens worldwide.
