… or have screens been refined to the point where there is no longer a danger of burning the image onto them?
Q
Screen savers are somewhat needed, as it is still remotely possible to achieve burn-in.
FOLDOC:
http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?query=screen+saver
ANY time the gun is firing in the back of your monitor, the CRT is working. I use screensavers, and I’ve got this nice fancypants NEC MultiSync 70.
What I haven’t gone and done, and probably should set up, is the power saving features that Win98 allows for. That way, after several minutes, my CRT will STOP firing, and save the wear and tear on the monitor. And, with a tap on my trac ball, it restores.
So yes, it does save from burn in. I know, that was the O.P. Burn in nowadays isn’t what it was with old IBM Green Screens, but it can happen. Consider the person working in an office. 95% of what they use is MS Word ( just for example). As time wears on, the MS Word template will burn in. My WAG is that it would take enough time that the CRT would go out of focus first, and the employee would get a new monitor.
Cartooniverse
Depending on the age of your monitor, screen savers aren’t necessary. If younger than 2 years, I’d say you don’t really need to use one, but it can’t hurt. The technology behind monitors has improved greatly recently, and the average new monitor would need a single image to be on the screen for more that 72 hours before you could even start to notice a little burn in.
And Cartooniverse, if you are running Windows 98, I would suggest staying away from all types of APM (Advanced Power Management). Windows 98 has many issues with APM, which have been acknowledged by Microsoft. It was also designed for use with laptops, to extend battery life. There is no reason to use it on a desktop computer, unless you like your computer locking up in sleep mode and not waking up without rebooting the computer.
Oddly enough, I have use the Setiathome screensaver for the past 2 years or so, and the purple lines around the border have burned into my screen!
That’s right! screen burn FROM a screensaver (of course the monitor is about 4 years old, FWIW)!
I don’t mean to turn people off the Seti saver, because the burning is very faint, and not a distraction… but it is ironic!
I still run the Seti creensaver, but now I have my montior set to shut off after 20 mins…
Yipes- THANK YOU. Live and learn. Does this mean it does NOT lock up laptops? My laptop also has Win98. Sorry for the hijack- I would have emailed, but a lot of people reading the thread might have the same question.
Thanks again for stomping on my ignorance 
Cartooniverse
The SETI display isn’t really a “screensaver”, since portions of the display don’t move. They fall into the camp that claims modern CRT’s don’t really need them, and their FAQ tells you to turn it off if you’re worried. Sounds like you have a definite counterexample. I don’t know how old your monitor is. I don’t know why SETI couldn’t periodically shift their display around a little bit.
As for older monitors:
I remember when we first got Sun Workstations where I was working at the time. In those days, they came with a monochrome monitor, and a screensaver program that consisted of a “life” game being played with Sun logos for the cells. It would periodically start a new game. Unfortunately, while the life game moved about the screen, they DID NOT shift the positions of the cells the logos were displayed in, and we eventually had a lot of monitors with a pattern of Sun logos burned into them, by the official Sun “screensaver”.
I also remember old Tektronix storage tubes which would burn into a waffle pattern if used in text mode too much. Later versions of the storage scopes shifted the character cell locations around by a pixel or two on each erasure to avoid this problem.
Astroboy14
You can set your SETI screensaver to turn blank so it doesn’t burn in, just go to settings and punch in a time, mine goes blank after running a minute.
In certain versions of Windows (95/98/maybe others), you can set the monitor to turn off after a certain period of time. (The option is below the screensaver part of the Display dialog box, accessable via the control panel.) IIRC, “Power Management” is superior to the screensaver, since it doesn’t wear down whatever-creates-the-image-on-the-screen. Power Management also saves energy, of course.
APM causes more problem with desktops than it’s worth. It is such a piece of crap, I would suggest turning off all APM options. It is responsible for more lockups than almost anything else in Windows 95/98. APM is also known to cause issues with USB devices. And, with most of the newer monitors, the percentage of power consumption that is saved by using APM is negligible. If you really want to save energy, turn off your monitor. If you want to have problems with your computer, use APM. It’s your choice.
And, just so you know, the phosphor on the inside of the screen is what is damaged when an image is burned in.
I used to think that burn-in was impossible in the newer monitors. A little over a year ago, my company installed all-new servers and associated equipment (i.e. monitors) as part of an enterprise-wide software change for one of our clients. The budget was unlimited, so they bought the best they could get. As the months have gone by, we’ve noticed that the desktop screens have burned in. Apparently, the in-house IT staff disabled the energy save feature and never turn off any of the monitors, for no particular reason. The el-cheapo 14" monitor I use at home for my various backup computer systems has been running fine for 8 years now with no burn-in. Conclusions drawn:
Let the monitor or OS use it’s energy save feature.
If you must use a screen-saver, use one with a dark background.
If the monitor or OS do not have an energy-save feature, turn it off when not in use - at night, when you go to lunch.
It doesn’t hurt to change your desktop’s wallpaper every now and then either.
I think energy save alone will protect your monitor, but old habits die hard. 
Yah, I know… but I didn’t bother to do that until I noticed the burn… anyways, it’s slight, and no big deal.
Not only does it prevent burn-in, it runs much faster that way because the computer doesn’t waste time drawing the screen. At least it did on an older version. (I don’t run it anymore since my primary computer is now a laptop.)
Thanks for all the replies, and maybe someone can help with this screen-saver related problem. When I try to run speed disc scan (and de-frag) off my Norton utilities software, I have to set my screensaver on 60 minutes because if I don’t, when the screen-saver kicks in it makes the speed scan have to start over ad infinitum. Does anyone have a solution for this?
Thanks
Q
I don’t see what the problem is with the solution that you’ve already found, but if you really want to, you can just move the mouse around periodically.
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I don’t see what the problem is with the solution that you’ve already found, but if you really want to, you can just move the mouse around periodically. **
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Yeah, I do that too, but for some reason, my defrag took ALL NIGHT long to run, and I didn’t want to sit in front of my computer all that time.
You can turn your screensaver off. In Win 95/98 it’s Start->Settings -> Control Panel -> Display -> Screensaver.
Interesting…
I’ve been using the Power Management features in Win 98 since I started leaving the machine on all the time (about 3 months, now) and I’ve never had the sort of problems you mention. Settings are: monitor off at 15 min, disks off at 30 min, system standby after 60 min. Similar settings on my work machine running Win2k, also no such symptoms.
We do have one monitor at work that has the NT logon splash rather visibly burned in. It’s an older Panasonic E21, and the user has never set up a screen saver or power management.
-mdf