what does a screensaver save your screen from?

A screensaver is a program designed to prevent "phosphor burn-in" on CRT and plasma screens. If there was no screensaver and a computer was left on for a prolonged period of time, essentially the light would burn into the screen causing permanent damage.

Nowadays with LCD screens there is no need, but they are often used for entertainment and security purposes.

It depends on the monitor and on the screensaver.

If you have a CRT:

If you leave a static image on the screen then you can burn that image into the phosphor, as the used phosphor wears away faster than the unused.

So if you have a screensaver that leaves a constant image up (like the fish tank image) then it does nothing for you. The best you can do is a blank screen which will stop the phosphors wearing out and will save a little power.

If you have an LCD:

Any screensaver does absolutely nothing for you. All the electronics is still active and the main power and wear out item is the backlight which is still burning.

The best thing to do is to use the power management options to put the monitor into a sleep mode. It only takes a second or two to wake up, but the power consumed will drop from about 70W to 150W for a CRT or 20 W to 70 W for an LCD down to 1 W to 3 W.

Have you heard of burnt in screens? When images are stalled for over a period of time, it may burn a permanent shadow effect, causing blurry images to form. Thus, screensaver ensures every part of the screen is moving after stalling for a period of time. See, even now theatre sets have screensaver function to protect TVs, but really, now many find amusement through screensavers, it could even be a virtual roller coaster ride (seen the Final Destination 3?). Hahaha...

Opps... not forgetting it saves electricity and extend your monitor life too. Only that its better you use Windows automatic shutdown of monitor function to really save electrical energy, and really extend monitor life.

Screensavers were used to keep from etching the image into CRT screens. With todays units, they really are not needed. The only thing they can save is you having to look at the desktop all the time.

haha you're a genius!!! i never would of thought to ask this Question. Anyways that makes since. I remember in high school one of my computers in the LAB had the image of a house faintly in the background. But the screen was never that house. So the computer never had a screensaver and the PC has burned the wall paper into the CTR monitor. COOLIO!!!

show-savers have been invented interior the early 80's while human beings have been utilising mono monitors and superb colorings might weakening the show thats why screensavers have been used to protecting the monitors of being burned by potential of superb colorings while workstation is idle. those days screensavers are greater seen element particularly then a choose.

In the early days of computing, before graphics became widely used, computers would only display text, computers were usually left on 24/7. screen savers stopped continuously displayed text from being 'burned' into the monitor. For this purpose, screen savers are not really necessary now.

actually, screensaver is made for CRT, if there were no screensaver, CRT monitor will be broken), but now most people are using LCD one.

it saves electricity most probably

gee not preety sure but i think is for saving electricity .