THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 12, 1994 TAG: 9409100039
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: The Gateway
SOURCE: BY TOM BOYER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
IT'S BEEN FIVE YEARS since we first glimpsed flying toasters serenely gliding across computer screens. Chrome gleaming, swanlike wings flapping, accompanied by an occasional floating slice of browned bread, they sent the quintessential late-'80s yuppie message: You're either a toaster or you're toast.
There was a great excuse to buy them, too. The animation, which kicks in after the computer is inactive for a period of time, helps prevent monitors from wearing out.
Since then, the flying toasters and other so-called screen savers have become a near-universal part of office decor - and a $100 million industry. There's wonderful variety, from the soothing to grating, whimsical to tasteless.
There are psychedelic patterns as cool as a lava lamp; a scene of skyscrapers twinkling at night; art masterpieces and bites from movie classics. Your monitor can host visits from Mickey Mouse, Bloom County, the Far Side and, most recently, The Simpsons.
A screen saver that's part of the PC Tools utility package is called ``food fight.'' If you leave your computer unattended, your work is pelted with overripe fruit and cream pies.
Another popular set is ``Opus 'N Bill,'' from Delrina, based on Berke Breathed's ``Bloom County'' strip. Last year, in one animation from that set, Opus the Penguin started taking potshots at a flock of airborne toasters. That prompted a lawsuit from Berkeley Systems, which created the toasters as part of its After Dark screen savers. To settle the case, Delrina changed the wings - the trademark of Berkeley toasters - to propellers.
After Dark, the granddaddy of screen savers, is still my favorite. It costs around $30 and has just been reissued in a spruced-up version. It requires Windows or a Mac and hogs several megabytes of hard disk space, but the animations are elegant, and the themes cover every mood.
For peace and quiet, there's a tank of tropical fish with little bubbly noises. For bad days, there's ``Bad Dog,'' a spotted mutt who paces around your screen, scratching, chewing and defecating until there's nothing left. ``Nonsense'' plunks down multicolored strings of random celebrity names, verbs and nouns. ``DrawMorph'' lets you make simple line drawings and watch them melt into each other.
Part of the fun is setting these up the way you like them. You can set Bad Dog's discipline level, decide how much of an insect infestation you want in ``Bugs.'' For ``Rat Race,'' you can set the intelligence level of the rodents that meander around a track.
Berkeley has also just issued a screen saver based on ``The Simpsons.'' You can get Bart with a spray can vandalizing your screen or Homer chasing after Marge eating your screen and leaving crumbs, even animated demos of how the Simpsons are drawn. These are funny, but for me, the coarseness wears thin. The strength of the Simpsons is the biting, insightful dialogue, which is the one thing you don't get with a screen saver.
If you don't want to pay a lot for commercial screen savers, you don't have to. Bulletin boards and file archives on the Internet are loaded with savers you can download for free or a nominal fee. Hackers also write animations that can work with After Dark and other commercial saver programs.
With all that's available, it's the old toasters that seem to look the best on my screen. Berkeley has added features - now, some continuously pop toast back and forth from one slot to the other as they glide along; others barrel-roll like fat biplanes. It's the right mix of humor and grace. Depending on how tomorrow goes, I may go back to ``food fight.'' ILLUSTRATION: Animation, like, toasters gliding across your screen, helps
prevent wear on monitors.
by CNB