TechBlog

Here’s a good tip I wish people would use more: get rid of your screensaver. Why? There are numerous reasons.
1) You probably don’t need a screensaver anymore. They were developed a while back to prevent an image from being burned into the glass on CRT (the giant tube) monitors. That sort of effect doesn’t happen with LCD screens anymore.
2) Installing and running your fancy aquarium screensaver takes up system resources - some of which you won’t get back until you reboot the computer. Cycling through dozens (or hundreds) of photos for a slideshow screensaver not only makes your computer read from your hard drive more frequently, it has to save all this data in RAM while the screensaver is active.
3) Displaying something on your monitor while you aren’t even in front of it is virtually useless. Who needs to look at it?

Here’s what you should do instead and why:
Replace your screensaver with a power-saving feature available in ALL operating systems - turn off the display. This will save some hours on screen life, significantly reduces the wattage burned while you’re not using the computer, and will stretch your battery life even further. I set my screensaver to “none”, tell the computer to turn off the display after 3 minutes of activity, and to sleep after an hour of idle time. Three minutes is a good amount of time - if I haven’t touched the mouse or keyboard for 180 seconds, I’m probably not going to for another few minutes. All it takes to get the computer to come back alive is to touch a key or wiggle the mouse and it’s right there. While it might take a half second longer to bring the monitor back on in some cases, I’m willing to make the sacrifice. Many computers don’t have a function to lock the computer when the display goes off; rather, that happens when the screensaver comes on. Not to worry, most operating systems have a “blank” screensaver. So if you’re worried about security, set the blank screensaver to come on at the same time your display blanks or thereafter. Doing so allows you to require a password to wake it back up.

I can’t count how many times I’ve been in meetings and when the person’s display turns off they quickly turn it back on by moving the mouse - just to let it sit there and do the same thing again, again, and again. It’s no wonder they complain about short battery life. I say, let your computer snooze whenever you’re not using it. You won’t be upset.