Screen Saver/Sleep Mode

aaroncaz

My Toshiba laptop's screensaver has decided to work all of a sudden, it does this on occasion! My question is, what is the difference if any between a screensaver and the laptop going into sleep mode, when left?? What is best? Sorry if this is a dim question:oam not that techie minded!

exup

A screensaver is basically to prevent "burnout" on a monitor screen - If the same static (like the desktop) image is left on display (such as some of the older cashpoint screens) then after a while the image can become permantly "etched" on the screen - resulting in an faint image that you will be able to see like a stain when the monitor is on - a screensave either turns the screen off - or displays a moving image to prevent burnout - hibernate is a power saving option which may shut down harddrives . monitor etc.

John_Gray

The Sleep and Hibernate modes are controlled by your Power settings.
The Screen Saver is controlled by the screen saver settings.
Both are based on "Time since Stuff Happened", and the times on your machine are quite probably different. The definition of inactivity might be somewhat different between the two, too!

Screen-savers are essentially redundant nowadays, and had a purpose in the past only to avoid burn-in of unmoving characters on a CRT monitor. Allowing a PC or laptop to go to Sleep (good) or Hibernate (better) or shutting it down (best) reduces the amount of electricity/battery used. Sleep and Hibernate probably use less than a watt, with hibernate using less than sleep. Powering it off uses almost no power (except for your network interface card, probably, measured in milliwatts, if you are using a wired connection).

aaroncaz

Thank you for your answers.

davb

John_Gray wrote: »

Screen-savers are essentially redundant nowadays, and had a purpose in the past only to avoid burn-in of unmoving characters on a CRT monitor.

Sounds strange I know, but I have seen this happen to LCD monitors as well. I presume the "fault" is different, but the end result is the same. It was on a PC that does a specific job, with the same screen menus running 24/7.
I think it's referred to as "image persistence" on LCD's, and there are potentially ways of resetting it,

John_Gray

davb wrote: »

Sounds strange I know, but I have seen this happen to LCD monitors as well. I presume the "fault" is different, but the end result is the same. It was on a PC that does a specific job, with the same screen menus running 24/7.
I think it's referred to as "image persistence" on LCD's, and there are potentially ways of resetting it,

News to me - and worth investigating, thanks. I suspect/hope is a less-damaging problem...

exup

John_Gray wrote: »

News to me - and worth investigating, thanks. I suspect/hope is a less-damaging problem...

I would have thought it would have been CRT only too -
but a 2nd hand laptop I rebuilt (using old screen and keyboard) There is an after image on the screen . You can only really see it on the windows welcome screen as two faint oblong smears to either side of the centre line - not a big problem for viewing though