Screensavers were originally created to prevent any discoloration to your monitor. With advances in technology, the need for using screensavers for this purpose has essentially been eliminated. Now, may people just use them for their own personal entertainment.

Screensavers can serve a much more important purpose other than providing us with a few minutes of visual pleasure. Enabling a screensaver can actually increase the security on your computer. You can configure a screensaver to start when your computer has been idle for a specific amount of time (for example, after five minutes). By password protecting the screensaver, the computer will be locked when the screensaver starts. In order to return to the desktop and resume working, you will need to supply the correct password. So once a password protected screensaver has been enabled, you can walk away from your computer knowing that your folders and files are secured.

In Vista, you can use the steps outlined below to enable a password protected screensaver.

1. Right click your desktop and click Personalize.
2. Click Screensaver.
3. Use the drop down arrow to select your screensaver of choice.
4. Change the Wait value to specify how long the computer can remain idle before the screensaver is started.
5. Select the On resume, password protect option. If you do not select this option any activity will cause the desktop to appear.

[tags]screensaver, screen saver, vista, password screen[/tags]