I know screensavers were necessary years ago because if an image was left on a CRT screen too long it would be permanently burned onto the screen. But are screensavers really necessary with the latest display technologies (especially laptops and flatpanel)?
A screensaver still comes in handy if you work with confidential information and you happen to be away from your desk.
Yes, a screensaver will avoid having burnin problems with your monitor, regardless of type. Even the makers of flat screen TVs warn not to watch too many hours of widescreen movies as the pixels in the dark areas at the top and bottom will age differently than the ones in between.
For computer screens, however, the ideal solution is to have your power management scheme set to make your monitor hibernate. This not only protects the screen, but saves energy and generally prolongs the life of your monitor. (And greatly prolongs battery charge and lifespan on laptops.)
If you aren’t using it now, make it go dark.
This isn’t completely correct. LCD monitors do not suffer from screen burn at all. I don’t know enough about plasma monitors to say for certain, but I don’t believe these suffer from, burn either, at least not to the extent that CRT-type displays do. And modern CRT computer monitors are much less subject to burn than those from a few years ago, or TV CRTs are. I’ve had this monitor for about three or four years, and so far there is no sign of burning, even though about 75% of the time, it’s displaying the Desktop.
Modern CRTs can burn in. I have a monitor I bought new in Dec. 2001. I dowloaded a poorly designed (parts were static, some things moved but not all) screensaver and used it for 6-9 months, the static part burned in. It isn’t really noticeable unless I’m on a white page.
My monitor has issues with the hibernate feature, so I just use the “blank” screensaver option or else switch it off.
I didn’t say they couldn’t burn, I said they were less subject to it. Compared to ones from,say, ten years ago, there’s a huge difference.
Thanks for the info. I think I will just set my laptop to go screensaver after a couple hours. I never ever use my laptop battery, it’s always plugged in to AC. In fact I should just order my next laptop without a battery. I would definitely use the power-saver if I was on battery though.
Some people are still using old technology though. I just got a new monitor about 6 months ago, and the last one before that is now 9 years old. Doubtless there are others who are able to afford even less than me ( :eek: ) and therefore derive great benefit from screensavers.
Q.E.D. while perhaps “burnin” might lead some people to think LCDs are immune to the effect since there is no hot phosphors, it is a 100% real effect. Pixels that stay light up age differently than ones that don’t. Over time this is quite noticable. You really have to be determined to keep one high contrast background image up on an LCD display but it does happen.
Also, I see it all the time on LCD screens that have “adjustable” screen area. The full screen is usually not used, two small bands at the top and bottom are permanently dark. But there is a setting for using the whole screen. (Intended for backwards compat. with text display that needs certain character sizes.) On even a 4-5 year old laptop, you turn on the “stretch” setting, fire up MS-Windows, and there is quite noticable banding at the top and bottom.
This is an absolute direct personal observation by me. Period.