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Screensavers and Desktop Fun
Michael Jensen
December 18, 2000
Screensavers once served the useful function of protecting the computer screen from having still images burned into the phosphorus coating in the monitor. Monitors today are more resistant to this and now the moving picture has become an personal expression the computer user's personality. Windows provides a variety of screensavers but if you're looking for something a little different, the Internet has a variety of free screensavers.
One site worth visiting is Webshots (http://www.webshots.com). It offers free software that allows you to download pictures that will be rotated for your screensaver. Or you can set one specific photo to be your desktop "wallpaper." You can choose from breathtaking natural scenery, cute animals, fine art, sports shots, and much more.
If you go to Webshots, you are offered a variety of choices. First, you can choose to download the Webshots screensaver and desktop wallpaper software. Downloading the 1.5MB file shouldn't take too long after you choose the photos. You can also send e-cards, with and without sound files attached. Photographers are invited to add their own photos to the community collection for others to see.
Screensaver.com (http://www.screensaver.com) has a large listing of screensavers to download, however they are not all free. Most are "shareware" that allow you to test them out for 30 days, after which you have to pay the registration fee. There are a large variety here, with many interactive ones that allow you to "shoot holes" in your desktop or watch aliens and bugs devour your computer. There is also a wide variety of desktop themes that you can download to spice up your computer. Most of these are free, and the download is, on average, only a few hundred kilobytes in size.
Put your lazy computer to use. When in screensaver mode, your computer is not doing anything. The people at SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Life) and UC Berkeley put all this computing power to use. SETI collects vast amounts of radio waves from space on a huge satellite dish in Puerto Rico and all this information is examined for signs of an artificial radio signal. When your computer goes into screensaver mode, the SETI@Home software will start processing data. When it has finished, it will send the results back to SETI and then download another piece of data to analyze. You can find SETI at http://www.seti.org where you can then click on the link to download the software.
Computers do not have to be boring! A new screensaver and desktop theme will liven up your workspace and make sitting in front of the computer a whole new experience!
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