For Seniors: Choose a Screen Saver for Your Laptop
Screen savers are animations that appear after your laptop has remained inactive for a time. Windows 7 comes with several screen savers you can select from and customize as desired.
In the early days of personal computers, screen savers helped to keep your monitor from burning out from constant use. Today, people use screen savers to automatically conceal what they’re doing from passersby or just to enjoy the pretty pictures. Note, however, that if you are running your laptop off the battery, you might want to disable the screen saver so it doesn’t use up your power.
Right-click the desktop and choose Personalize.
The Personalization window appears.
Click the Screen Saver button in the bottom-right corner of the window.
The Screen Saver Settings dialog box appears.
From the Screen Saver drop-down list, choose a screen saver.
The screen saver you selected is previewed on the tiny screen within the Screen Saver Settings dialog box.
Use the arrows in the Wait xx Minutes text box to set the number of inactivity minutes that Windows 7 waits before displaying the screen saver.
If you choose a lower setting such as 5 minutes, you save battery power on your laptop; but if you choose a higher setting, you avoid sometimes annoying screen blackouts causing you to have to log in again. You can always change this setting if you want to make a different choice in the future.
Some screen savers allow you to modify their settings: for example, how fast they display or how many lines they draw onscreen. To customize your screen saver, click the Settings button when you're in the Screen Saver Settings dialog box.
Click the Preview button to preview the screen saver on the laptop's screen.
When you’re happy with your settings, click to stop the preview, and then click OK.
Click the Close button in the Personalization window.
The window closes and the screen saver will go into effect after a period of inactivity.
