Screensavers are one of the easiest and most popular ways of personalising a computer.

They require no great technical knowledge to install or use. But why personalise your computer with someone else’s pictures when you could use your own? Both Windows XP and Vista can use photos stored on your hard disk as screensavers and in this feature we’ll show you how. Screensavers started out as an essential utility. Old monitors would suffer if the same image was left on them for too long.

Eventually the image would burn itself into the screen, leaving an irritating ghost image. In severe cases the monitor could be left unusable. In these days of LCDs and modern CRTs this is no longer necessary but screensavers have become popular. The most basic kind of screensaver simply blanks the screen. Others show pictures or snazzy animations.

All versions of Windows come with a selection of screensavers built in, but the variety that can be found on the internet is so impressive that there is sure to be something to match everybody’s interests.

Making photos into a screensaver
What better way to make a screensaver personal than to use a selection of favourite photos? Windows can do this so there is no need to download and install any extra software. First let’s take a look at the screensaver options window in XP (we’ll look at Vista later in this article). This is found in the Display Properties dialogue box.

Right-click on an empty part of the Desktop and left-click on Properties, then left-click on the Screen Saver tab to see all of the screensaver settings. The dropdown menu is used to select which screensaver you wish to use. Click one and a preview of it appears in the dialogue box’s monitor screen. There are 11 screensavers provided with Windows XP and it is easy to add more.

The Wait option is used to set how long the computer will wait before starting the screensaver. The various 3D screensavers can look impressive, but are a little impersonal for our tastes. The My Pictures Slideshow is much better. Left-click on the dropdown menu and select My Pictures Slideshow. The screen at the top of the window will change to show a preview of what the screensaver will look like.

Unless told otherwise, Windows will use all the images in the My Pictures folder, so you may decide that selecting a specific folder would be more appropriate. To do this, left-click on the Settings button. Left-click on Browse to select a different folder to use. The other options in this window are used to change the size of the images and how often they change. Click on OK and then on Apply to save the changes.

Left-click on the Preview button to check that the settings are correct. This starts the screensaver immediately. It works as normal, so moving the mouse will stop the screensaver.

Words on security and power
Screensavers can be used to keep the computer safe when it is not being used if there is a password set for the User Accounts. Click in the box labelled ‘On resume, display Welcome Screen’ and then on the Apply button. When the screensaver stops, the logon screen appears and a password must be entered to get back into the computer.

The computer is still running as normal when the screensaver is on, so there will be no benefits from any power-saving options. Many animated screensavers, especially those that use 3D graphics in Windows Vista, may use more power than the computer does showing the Windows Desktop.

With this in mind it is a good idea to check the Power options on your computer and change them so that the screensaver switches to a blank screen after a reasonable delay. There is a shortcut to the power options on the computer from the Screen Saver window; click on the Power button at the bottom. The actual options that can be changed will depend on whether the computer is a notebook or desktop.

Notebooks have more options as there is a greater need to conserve power.