I was feeling a little nostalgic this morning so I decided to dig up the backups of my old blog and see what was there. Here’s a post from when I was 13 or 14.
Here’s a little bit of history. Old CRT monitors burnt if you left them turned on with the same screen for a looooong loooong time.
Do you remember back then? When you finished what you were doing that day, but didn’t want to turn on your sloooooooow computer next morning and wait for fifteen minutes to continue working, so you just left it turned on, and the next morning you came back to see the same screen, with the same work you left yesterday.
That was the past. In the past, the usage of screensavers was meant to avoid this: the burn of the screens: pixels literally are “printed” in the crystal, creating a layer that distorts the shown images itself. By changing the content of the pixels shown in the screen, this effect was avoided efficiently.
But that was the past.
Now, technology has advanced. Operating systems avoid those old behaviours by turning off our monitors after a time of inactivity.
Screensavers are a reminiscence of the past. If you use one, you won’t be doing anything good to your screen, because manufacturers use technological solutions to avoid this.
When your computer doesn’t register any activity (mouse movement, keyboard inputs or other peripherals acting with the computer), it starts a countdown. When it comes the end of that countdown, it automatically turns off the screen, and if inactivity is longer, usually the computer will also turn off hard disks and even can change the state of the computer to a state of “hibernation” to get the same result as way back, but in a more efficient way.
This behaviour is the right for our monitors, and also for our planet. By using a screensaver, we keep consuming electricity because the screen is still working, printing the screensaver to the screen.
To keep our planet a greener place, reducing our carbon footprint and extending our natural resources, it’s better to let the computer turn off the monitor, rather than showing an screensaver, or even better, fully turn off your computer when you’re not using it. Modern computers have very small startup times compared to older machines. My MacBook turns on within seconds, and my Windows 8 desktop is not far behind.
It may be useful if you work in an office environment, if you’ve left your desk for a few minutes to do something and don’t want others to see what is on your screen… but only for some minutes! After that, you should configure your operating system energy saving options for turning off your monitor.
Although you didn’t realise it, it’s a great contribution to health of our planet to not use a screensaver.
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