Are screen savers necessary?

A long time ago we answered this question for CRT monitors, however it bears re-visiting with the recent popularity of LCD monitors. The answer may surprise you.

Screen savers were invented many years ago to prevent "burn-in" on monochrome (green or amber) monitors. Burn-in happens when one image has been displayed on the monitor for a long enough time that the phosphors on the monitor are permanently "burned" or marked with that image. This is most obvious when the negative of the image is still visible on the screen even when the monitor is turned off. Modern screen savers have gone beyond the basic blank screen and added animation, sound, and cartoon characters to screen savers. This is, of course, to sell more of them.

While color CRT (picture tube) monitors generally do not require a screen saver unless they are left on for a significant period of time, LCD monitors are in fact subject to burn-in. Samsung, a manufacturer commonly used by ITS, recommends that if a burned-in image is visible on an LCD monitor the user should unplug the monitor for 48 hours and that will ususally clear up the problem. Users of CRT monitors are not as lucky; burned-in images on those devices tend to be more permanent.

ITS still sees some screen savers that actually cause problems. For instance, some fancy screen savers use so much processor time that other functions on the PC grind to a halt - therefore we recommend that our clients never run animated screen savers on a server. We have even seen this slowdown happen using the generic screen savers that come with Windows.

Therefore ITS recommends users with all monitors stick with the plain "blank" screen saver, use the power settings in Windows to turn off the monitor after an hour or two of inactivity, and/or just turn off the monitor. After all, if a monitor is going to be unused long enough to cause burn in, it may as well be off.

October 2006

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