Tons o Screensaver Info as Never Seen Before

The first free screensavers were allegedly written for the original IBM PC by John Socha, best known for creating the Norton Commander; he also coined the term screen saver. The screensaver, named scrnsave, was published in December 1983 issue of the Softalk magazine. It simply blanked the screen after three minutes of inactivity (an interval which could be changed only by recompiling the program).

The Atari 400 and 800's screens would also go through random screensaver-like color changes if they were left inactive for too long. The user had no control over this. These computers, released in 1979, are technically earlier "screen savers." And prior to these computers, the 1977 Atari VCS/2600 gaming console included color cycling in games like Combat or Breakout, in order to prevent burn-in of game images to 1970's-era televisions. These are examples of screensavers in ROM or the firmware of a computer.

Today with the help of modern graphics technologies there is a wide variety of different screensavers. Because of 3D computer graphics, which provide realistic environments, 3D screensavers are available.

Free Screensaver software can also be used as a rudimentary security measure. Many screensavers can be configured to ask users for a password before permitting the user to resume work. However, a user might be able to circumvent the password by restarting the computer if the computer's owner has set their account to automatically log in.

Screensavers are not to be confused with power management features. In fact, screensavers can actually waste power, because they can prevent the computer from entering the lower power (or sleep) state, and they often cause the CPU and GPU to perform more calculations, and keep the hard disk running for longer than if the computer were idle.

An early screensaver for the Macintosh platform, and later PC/Windows, After Dark, prominently featured whimsical designs such as flying toasters. Perhaps in response to the workplace environment in which they are often viewed, many great free screensavers continue this legacy of whimsy by populating the idle monitor with animals or fish, games, and visual expressions of mathematics equations such as fractals.

The screensaver is also an outlet for the work of creative computer programmers. The Unix-based screensaver XScreenSaver collects the display effects of other Unix screensavers, which are termed "display hacks" in the jargon file tradition of US computer science academics. It also collects forms of computer graphics effects called demo effects, originally included in demos created by the demo scene.