From Silly To Sublime, There's A Screen Saver For Everyone

Here's how Microsoft executive Steve Shaiman describes a high-level product briefing among senior managers at the Redmond campus:

One person might talk about SQL Server and network backbones. Another might update the group on C2 security and distributed services. When his turn comes, Shaiman will pipe up with something like, "Hey, have I got some nifty screen savers to show you guys!"

In the solemn, productivity-obsessed world of software coding, showing up at a big meeting trumpeting screen savers is like showing up at a Guinness Stout convention drinking a can of Lite beer. They have little purpose beyond putting something besides boring data on a computer monitor. "And maybe bringing a smile to your face," Shaiman said.

The original theory behind screen savers was to protect the monitor display from phosphor burn, a process that might ultimately "blow out" enough dots on the screen to degrade the image. Savers were designed to kick in after a specified period of keyboard inactivity - say, 10 minutes - and put moving images on the screen to prevent any one cluster of phosphors from overuse.

In practice, screen burn is rare. I've only seen one case: an old, old mainframe VDT that had a screen header you could read when the monitor was blank. Even with the burn, the header displayed fine when the screen was active.

If you're really concerned about screen burn, the solution is simple: Turn off the monitor. Granted, you can't do that on a Macintosh, perhaps one reason savers first became popular on the Mac. But most IBM-and-compatible monitors have easily accessible on-off switches.

It's pretty remarkable, then, that screen savers have flourished to the point where they are one of the top-selling consumer software categories. For several years, Berkeley Systems in California had the category pretty much to itself. Its "After Dark" series, featuring everything from aquarium fish (actually the brainchild of two Microsoft wunderkinder, Ed Fries and Tom Saxton) to wacky flying toasters, set the standard for Macintosh from office to home.

Something for everyone

Now it seems everybody's getting in the act. Shaiman's group recently issued three sets of "Microsoft Scenes" - 48 images each of impressionist paintings, outer space images and Sierra Club photos - that can be used as savers or wallpaper (background for PCs with Windows).

Kirkland-based Delrina Corp. has put together "Opus 'n Bill," a collection of animated cartoons drawn by Vashon Island boating freak Berkeley Breathed, whose "Bloom County" newspaper cartoon strip (since succeeded by "Outland") won a Pulitzer Prize. And Berkeley Systems is expected to issue shortly a new "After Dark" series based on Walt Disney characters.

The Microsoft modules are the classiest screen savers you'll ever find. The Impressionist paintings, including works by Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Degas and Pissarro, are strikingly detailed for computer VGA images. Microsoft has gone to some lengths to convert the paintings to digitized form, dramatically raising the level of expectation for a PC environment.

Perhaps these are what Chairman Bill Gates has in mind for the flat-panel displays in his new Medina waterfront estate. It's not clear whether, when the house is finally finished, the "wall-hanging" display panels Gates envisions for it will be available on quite the scale he originally hoped for. But the images themselves have definitely arrived. That's evident, too, on the company's outer space and Sierra Club collections.

The comic approach

Where "Microsoft Scenes" veers toward the stunning and sublime, the "Opus 'n Bill" collection is mordantly slapstick.

Bill the Cat, Opus the Penguin and Breathed's other social misfits are up to their usual tricks and then some. Gates even makes a cameo, getting his head blown off by a supposed memory-saving "Microsquash" program that crashes his beloved Windows every time.

Breathed even takes pokes at the modules of Berkeley Systems (is there some kind of name thing going on here?), with Opus shooting down those pesky flying toasters with a shotgun. There's also a bungee-jumping module starring Gates and a cosmetically altered Bill the Cat.

Where Breathed really has fun is with sound. "Opus 'n Bill" is full of doinks, burps, boings and other audibles that add just the right touch to the screwy screen images. It's worth getting a sound card for your IBM-and-compatible just to listen up.

My favorite is a sequence showing Bill the Cat swinging effortlessly on a rope through the clear blue sky until . . . splat! He hits the monitor screen, "cracking" the glass. A flattened feline slowly slides off the screen, leaving a wake of nose dew. It captures the way you feel on certain days.

The widely anticipated Disney modules are not out yet. When they do come, I'll have to fend off my office neighbor Greg Heberlein - the Wall Street reporter and renowned Mickeyholic - for a quick look before turning them over to him for an expert opinion.

Screen savers are cheap, going for $20 to $30. They're fun. They don't do anything bad to you. And, as holiday season approaches, they make great gifts for the digitally inclined.

News bytes

Instant Access International has teamed up with Multiple Zones International (the Mac Zone and PC Zone folks) to produce a CD-ROM catalog of more than 150 Macintosh programs. You get the disc free, "browse" the applications and then order the ones you like with a credit card. You're then given a code to de-encrypt the selected programs. Available in October. . . . Home education was the fastest-growing category in second-quarter U.S. and Canada software sales, increasing by 55 percent. Overall sales jumped by 13.9 percent.

Tip of the week

Back to screen savers: There's even a public domain saver featuring Gates, available as GATES.ZIP on the GO SOFTLIB library in Ziffnet, which is accessible through commercial services. Gates is shown washing "Windows."

User Friendly appears Tuesdays in The Seattle Times. Paul Andrews is a member of The Times staff.