Dangers of Screensavers

i could really never understand what the advantage of a 'screensaver' is , never installed one .
hbg

I put mine in stand by.

There's No Such Thing As a Free Lunch.

TINSTAFL.

"Free" screensavers and smilies are often used as a tempt to the younger element of socitey. The purveyor then installs malware in to the computer in addition to the screensaver/smilie.

A company to AVOID in this connection is FunWebProducts and it's offshoots.

Screensavers are useful if you have a CRT monitor but not really necessary for TFT/flat screen monitors.

Edgar .... how are you getting on with your other thread and fixing the troubles?

E

Wouldn't have a screensaver on any of my machines. All of my 'puters are on pretty much 24/7, set to douse their displays after 15 minutes of inactivity, and to go into standby after another 45 minutes of inactivity. My scheduled apps are set to wake the machine if necessary, and they're all configured to "Wake on LAN" so I can access any of them over my network whenever I want to.

I haven't had any incidents lately, since I ran ad-aware, bot check and registry scan programs.

Merely to please ones aesthetic sensibilities.

What are screensavers?

Generally Screen saver is use for saving screen resolution. And your computer.

The thread was essentially started because some free screen savers were, possibly still are, being used for a ruse to add malware to computers. It was never meant as a diatribe against the use of screen savers.

... candy for your computer monitor.

Just a friendly warning, eh, ed? I must have been born under a lucky star (knock-knock) , or maybe my security programs do their work. I change mine seasonally. Have done for years. Like the one I linked to earlier this morning at "Coffee".

There's more out there other than Windows' Great Plains Scenery, imo.

Wouldn't do it with the company's computer at the office, tho. Hey, you never know.

Gotta watch out for those websites that stuff cookies into your temporary internet files - stay away from them, like, stay at home.

I started this thread so many years ago, my information may no longer be relevant.

In the early days of PCs, when people left them turned on all day (especailly in businesses), there was a very real risk of burning a "ghost" image on the screen. Those were two-tone (usually black and white, or black and yellow) CRTs--cathode ray tubes, which means they were just cheap televisions. The screen saver literally did that, it saved the screen from having an image burned into it. Screensavers became a purpose in itself, though, soon enough. Monitors became more sophisticated, and as the technology of televisions and computer monitors became cheaper but more efficient, so the screensavers were actually no longer needed. It was highly unlikely that you would burn an image into the screen, which was a very real danger with the early, cheap CRT monitors.

Now people just like to have such an image. I am into RPGs--role playing games. I've downloaded lots and lots of sword and sorcery images for use in the games. I just sized the images in photoshop, and made a file of them, which were rotated as the screen saver. You don't have to download a screensaver, you can create your own from any reliable image on your box.