When did the screen saver come to life? And why are they more boring now than they were 30 years ago? I’d like to argue that when we talk about screen savers, we’re talking about two very different things. tedium.co/2025/01/12/s... new @tedium.co - ThreadSky

ernie.tedium.co • 50 days ago

When did the screen saver come to life? And why are they more boring now than they were 30 years ago?

I’d like to argue that when we talk about screen savers, we’re talking about two very different things.

https://tedium.co/2025/01/12/screen-saver-history/

new @tedium.co

Comments

martymerrill.bsky.social•49 days ago

I bought the "Lion King" screen saver in the mid 90's for my PackardBell desktop. It was great!

jenjenfofen.bsky.social•49 days ago

Flying toasters

spearlike.bsky.social•49 days ago

I really liked the one that was pipes.

kwullums.bsky.social•49 days ago

There's no point anymore right? Screens aren't burning themselves... and compies can sleep
https://youtu.be/pM5x7lFSw4w?si=JKz9PM4RoUZ2BkNp

chestnutt71.bsky.social•49 days ago

If my boss left his computer unattended for too long, I’d go change it to a message (usually about giving me a raise) and then password protect it.

cold-feet.bsky.social•49 days ago

The SUN workstations used to play the game of life. I would get mesmerized watching that and trying to predict what would happen.

miketerhar.com•49 days ago

I remember turning on and off CRTs. Firing up the tubes was taxing and risky.

Screen savers avoided cycling monitors on and off every time someone went to get coffee or a meeting. Changed the on/off cycle to once per day or once per week depending on the setting.

bbgorl-ixy.bsky.social•49 days ago

I LOVED Snowqualmi and Electric Sheep.

ldo17.bsky.social•49 days ago

It started with “Pyro!” on the Macintosh, back in the day. Then developed extensibility (“After Dark”), spread to Windows etc.

Nowadays we just have power-save mode. But we still have xscreensaver. Won’t autostart under Wayland, but the individual display modules still work.

mich-90.bsky.social•49 days ago

I liked one I had…. A window washer would come and wipe down the screen.

mrlint.bsky.social•49 days ago

I won't ever get over losing After Dark

rspanos.bsky.social•49 days ago

I also want Oscar the Grouch to sing “I Love Trash” whenever I delete a file…

jaffy1134.bsky.social•49 days ago

Ah…… I remember the Clive screensaver back in the 90’s. A little guy who was castaway on a little island. Just brilliant.

kristinenapper.bsky.social•49 days ago

I almost thought I invented that memory!

drummerfromfife.bsky.social•49 days ago

Can you even download old screensavers from Windows 98 or something and have them successfully run on Windows 10/11?

ernie.tedium.co•49 days ago

I haven't tried this but the answer appears to yes

https://www.howtogeek.com/767610/how-to-use-classic-screen-savers-in-windows-11/

drummerfromfife.bsky.social•49 days ago

Not bad. I wouldn't do it, I don't really care about novelty screensavers anymore, but I'll admit, there is a certain fascination at the thought of downloading one of those old fellas...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg0ubutLJuA&t=2s&pp=ygUeYmFjayB0byB0aGUgZnV0dXJlIHNjcmVlbnNhdmVy

ode2daapple.bsky.social•49 days ago

I had a coworker whose screensaver was a slideshow of pictures from the computer. A colleague didn’t know this, put his thumb drive in to pull a document & forgot to eject it. unfortunately he had all his gay porn in a file and it started playing after 5 minutes of inactivity.

ernie.tedium.co•49 days ago

Damn, that's rough

ode2daapple.bsky.social•49 days ago

That’s how we all learned he was gay. We called it his ‘dirty stick’ after that.

seamer.bsky.social•49 days ago

I’d assume you’d get pilloried for advocating always-on screen settings now that savers aren’t needed and we’re supposed to be thinking of power saving

calicowitch.bsky.social•49 days ago

"Nothing changes. You are just a dot, burning in the phosphor of a tube, attached to a machine that isn’t smart enough to realize that you need to change position every once in a while."

This goes harder than it should 😂

Very interesting read!

ecodweeb.bsky.social•49 days ago

While wasteful to run an animated screen saver that was a preservation method of a by-gone technology on modern hardware, the positive psychological impact they have is worth it to me. Looked up an NEC CRT monitor from 1993 I saw on a TV show, 1.8A draw! My whole rig is less than 200W!

ernie.tedium.co•50 days ago

“Screen saving is an anti-forgetfulness technique.”

https://tedium.co/2025/01/12/screen-saver-history/