screensavers

There's only so much you can expect from a screensaver. After all, its only real purpose is to be decorative; we're long past the days when screensavers were necessary to prevent phosphor burn-in on monitors. Moving Clouds Screensaver is one of the many thousands of screensavers available online, and we can't say it particularly impressed us with its graphics or other features. But the program is functional, and we suppose you could do worse.

We figured from the screensaver's name that it would feature a blue sky with some clouds placidly floating by. Maybe they could … Read more

Celebrity deaths are always followed by those who try to profit from the public's collective grief. The suspiciously named Michael Joseph Jackson Screensaver is a prime example of such behavior: yes, they mean "the" Michael Jackson, middle name Joseph. Who knew? But someone threw together a handful of photos of the late lamented King of Pop, hoping that grieving fans would pony up. We are neither impressed nor amused.

It's not that it's an awful screensaver. It has a fair number of features, including the ability to play users' own music. You can customize the … Read more

Ditch the drudge to meander through a beautiful woodland during a springtime shower with Spring Rain Screensaver. This attractive program transports users to a sylvan scene when their PCs are idle. Although we'd prefer more control over its animations, we like this relaxing screensaver very much.

Spring Rain Screensaver consists of a full-screen image of a creek running through woods and a gentle-falling spring rain. The movement of the water is obviously animated and not an actual video, but the effect is appealing and realistic enough. The rushing water sound effects are also of a high quality and are … Read more

Screen savers these days tend to give users a lot of options: adjust the speed of one element, change the quantity or color of something else, add your own music, and so on. Coral Reef screen saver downplays customization in favor of really, really good graphics, and we can't say it's a bad trade-off.

The screen saver doesn't do a whole lot. As the name would suggest, it's an underwater scene, with fish leisurely swimming past a shipwreck. Sunlight streams through the water, creating a ripple effect on the sea creatures in the foreground. Users can … Read more

The idea behind 43 President Screensaver is a good one. It's a screensaver slideshow featuring the names and faces of the 43 United States presidents set against colorful backgrounds. We can see how teachers and history buffs might enjoy it. Unfortunately, the design of this screensaver montage is poor.

We easily installed 43 President Screensaver on our laptop. The ZIP file download contains both the program and instructions for using it. We didn't need the instructions to get up and running. Screen resolution was noticeably low once the slideshow began. The photos 43 President Screensaver displays are very … Read more

Flash2X Screensaver Builder lets users create screensavers from pre-existing Flash files. Unfortunately, we had trouble getting the program to run correctly, and the built-in Help file was no Help at all.

To test this program, we downloaded several sample Flash files that we planned to turn into a screensaver. To its credit, the program's interface is very intuitive, letting users first enter information such as the screensaver's name and publisher contact information. The next tab is where the program fell apart for us. We attempted to add some Flash files for our screensaver, all of which were files … Read more

Electric Sheep is a free screensaver that lets your computer join a global network of computers processing "electric sheep"--striking, ever-changing, abstract fractal animations generated with a genetic algorithm (taking their name from the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick).

Your computer downloads and displays sheep from the current "flock" as your screensaver, while running in the background, your CPU contributes to the parallel computation and mutation of new sheep, joining thousands of other computers around the world. You can also vote on sheep with your up and down … Read more

Enjoy playing Elder Scrolls by Bethesda Game Studios? You can extend the entertainment of the gaming experience to your PC even when you're not playing by installing this nifty screensaver that features elements from Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PlayStation 3) Screensaver installs quickly and unobtrusively to your Windows system. This free download doesn't launch its own interface; instead, users access the screens through the Windows Screensaver dialog box by way of the Personalization command on the right-click Desktop menu or through the Appearance and Personalization command on the Windows Control Panel. The Elder … Read more

Christmas is coming; in fact, it's always coming. Get in the spirit with a festive animated 3D screensaver that also counts down the days until Christmas with 3D Magic Christmas Toy Shop, which turns your desktop into a window on Santa's workshop. It plays music to a variety of animated activities, including a toy train, an elf on a rocking horse, a glittering Christmas tree, and a snowman dancing outside in the cold. You can easily alter the color balance to give, for example, a reddish or greenish glow, and change what falls from the sky. It displays … Read more