Do we still need screen savers?

Factual Questions
1

I had the following conversation on AIM the other day:

him: There isn’t really a need for screen savers anymore
me: How come?
him: Cuz the image isn’t going to burn into new monitors like it used to like in late 80’s and before
me: I dunno about that–our HDTV big screen downstairs can have images burned onto the sides when using TV mode (not full screen), it has vertical gray bars on the sides instead of black or white b/c black and white will burn into the screen
him: Well it won’t happen to computer monitors
me: Why not?
him: Don’t know, I read somewhere tht it doesn’t happen anymore
me: Electrons are electrons, phosphors are phosphors
him: Something they are doing now
me: I’m posting and i’ll ask the teeming millions about this
him: Who are they?

So does anyone know whether or not my ignorant chum is right or not?

2

Don’t take this as a guru’s answer! My uncle mentioned once that we no longer really need screen savers - it takes a lot more to burn a comp screen than it used to
Take it for what it’s worth… not much!

3

Didn’t need em in the late 80’s, don’t need em today. YMMV.

4

What does YMMV mean?

5

Sorry about the hijack, but also what does WAG mean (while I’m asking about YMMV)?

6

Wild ass guess.

Current monitors won’t ‘burn’ an image in in any reasonable amount of time. They’re more of a novelty than anything.

7

Er, and YMMV means “Your milage may vary.”

8

In a workplace environment or where there are shared computers, you probably want a password protected screen saver to keep other people out of your computer.

Note that it doesn’t have to be anything fancy. It could just be a blank screen, or the window that says “This computer is in use and has been locked” (even though that is not a screen saver, but that doesn’t matter because:)

Any VGA compatible monitor does not suffer burn in. Only monochrome (or amber or green), or CGA or EGA monitors had that problem. I (as well as many others) have left my monitor on 95% of the time for the past 5 years.

9

As a matter of fact, the POS terminals that I use at work have the images of the check out screen burned into them. So as far as I’m concerned, we DO still need them.

10

One particularly lousy monitor in my office as the image of a mostly static screen saver burned into it. Its a larger 17" monitor, probably about 10 years old so you are not the only one to see this…

11

Single purpose monitors, like those at airports or point of sale can benefit from screen savers. With a decent color monitor, burning in takes a long long time. For example, I’ve got a 1988 vintage Apple high resolution monitor that was turned on through most of the 90’s. During that time an Apple symbol was nearly constantly displayed in the upper left hand corner. Using TechTool to change that areas color to red, white, green or black reveals absolutely no sign of burn in. That’s after 14 years without a screensaver !

12

Where I work, in the early 90s we had many crappy amber monochrome monitors that had the “C:” DOS prompt burned into bottom line.

13

The funny thing is that the VGA monitors, that don’t need screen savers, are always supplied with them.

The amber monochrome monitors in places like the Sears Tire Centers, for example, that do need screen savers, lack them and all suffer from burn-in.

14

If we don’t need them, why do today’s operation systems come with a dozen or so to choose from? Just for mentality’s sake?

15

Another question, while we’re on the subject. . . What about old arcade games? Those are color and those have burn-in.

16

A lot of the burn-in on older workplace computers is not because the computer was left running with a certain thing on the screen (what screensavers are supposed to prevent) but rather because one thing is constantly displayed while the computer is in use (like a check-out screen or other form)

17

The Micron monitor I am using right now (in use since January '99) has a slight but noticable burn in from the desktop image. When I leave work each night I log off Novell and the desktop image is visible underneath the signon window. So for 3 1/2 years the same image has been on the screen while I am not here.

I also had a burn in on a Mac laptop. The difference with the LCD burn-in (or whatever you call it on an LCD screen) is that the burn in faded away after a few days of use.

18

Supposedly modern monitors don’t suffer from burn-in, but I’ve seen it happen. We had a bunch of computers in a computing lab here that suffered that fate. But they were on 24/7, so it was an extreme case.

Still, putting a password on your screen saver is the first step to protect your computer from prying eyes (the second is to add a BIOS password).

19

My company operates embedded systems that use standard color computer monitors of better than SVGA resolution for their display. A number of the monitors, many from '96-'98, do in fact have screen burn because these embedded systems will mostly be displaying the same screens all the time.

20

I’d say screen savers are obsolete because modern computers have automatic power-off. When the monitor is not in use, it makes more sense to turn it off rather than waste energy displaying fancy graphics. My pet peeve is people who use screen savers on laptops - laptops all have automatic power-off, and LCD screens turn on instantly so there’s no excuse for using screen savers.