A screen saver is a simple, ordinary, commonplace utility…so often misunderstood.
I got a call from someone in our office.
Friend: “My computer’s dead.”
Me: “Ok, can you tell me what’s wrong with it?”
Friend: “The screen’s black. I got some coffee, came back, and the screen was black.”
It was a short walk to her desk, so off I go. Looking at the monitor, I saw that it was on with no flashing red lights, so I knew it was connected to the computer. Instinctively, my hand went to the mouse, and snap. The screen came back with all her work.
Friend: “WHAT DID YOU DO!?”
Me: “I moved your mouse. It was your screen saver.”
Friend: “Thanks! You’re a lifesaver!”
A guy called in and said, “My computer blew up!” But, really, he had only experienced the ‘starfield’ screen saver.
My Dad: “I go upstairs. I run Pointcast [an online news service]. I hang up. I go downstairs. I come back up ten minutes later, and Pointcast turned itself on.”
Me: “Pardon?”
My Dad: “I go back upstairs and there’s Pointcast.”
Me: “You’re sure you shut it down?”
My Dad: “I think I did.”
Me: (the light dawns) “Oh, Dad, that’s a screen saver.”
I was doing Excel support at Microsft shortly after Win95 came out. Someone called and needed some help on Excel. He told me he had left the computer for a few minutes, and when he came back, the “devil” had “possessed” his computer. He told me it was bubbling all over the place, and the devil was in his monitor. I told him to move the mouse. The devil left. It was the screen saver.
My mother frequently has to leave her computer on overnight at work, one day she installed a new screen saver and left it overnight. It turns out this screen saver makes some “less than normal” noises, and when the cleaning lady turned up she thought the room was possessed by ghosts. She has refused to clean the room since.
This exchange with one of my co-workers had me laughing:
Coworker: “Hi! My screen saver has fallen off this terminal and hit the keyboard, causing it to lock up. Can you tell me how to fix it?”
It turned out the polarized screen filter had fallen off and hit the scroll lock key.
Trying to ask how to remove a screen saver:
Customer: “I just go to My Computer and delete everything, right?”
My girlfriend is fond of The Little Mermaid, so she downloaded the free Little Mermaid screensaver offered at disney.com. After a month of using the screen saver, I got on to use the word processor, and I noticed I could see the words “Disney’s The Little Mermaid” faintly at the bottom of my document. The screensaver, instead of “saving” the screen, caused those words to burn in on the monitor. High five to the geniuses who designed the thing.
I sold my old computer to a friend’s friend. He never call me again. Some months latter I saw him and ask him how it was going. He told me that he had thrown it away because it was broken. When I asked him what the problem was, he told me that when he stopped typing for a while, the image on the screen started to melt and slip to the bottom, leaving a black space. If he touched the mouse or the keyboard, everything returned to normal. He was convinced I was sold him a defective machine and dumped the perfectly good computer. Apparently he haven’t ever heard of screen savers, and I forgot to tell him I had installed one named “Screen Melt FX.”
TBC
Loading comments...