Ever since the first screensavers came out, I've liked 'em. I can't help it - the odd little world-in-a-world, snowglobe fantasy kind of behind-the-screen-alternate-reality thing ....

Anyway, after all the slogging around, there are surprisingly few decent IMHO screensavers out there - and a lot of cheesy effects thrown together.

I got many of these screen saver URLs from this thread on the Serene Screen fan board. Many others are the result of slogging through some Google searches and some humungous download sites.

By the way, if anyone remembers "Seize the Day" Living Worlds from the early 90's, I think those 12 scenes (by fantasy artist Mark Ferrari, and other coding by Sofie MacKenzie, Daniel Aldrich, Jacob Feinberg and Joe Huckaby (according to my copy)) - moving water, moving clouds, day-to-night, changing weather conditions, lights in windows - would make great screensavers ... maybe I'm spoiled, but they set the standard in my mind for the "window into another world" thing, and even in this day and age, few things beat 'em. (Some of the art is viewable on markferrari.com.) (If you can get a copy of the "Seize the Day" floppies, you can run them on Windows even now, although the animations will run far faster than they should. By the way, thanks for the working registration codes when I lost mine!)

All material on this page is purely personal opinion. I am not responsible for any consequences of downloading or registering of these products.

WARNING: some downloads are risky. A few unscrupulous places have bundled spyware with their products. You may even risk getting a virus. Get anti-spyware products, and keep your virus detection software up-to-date, and never download anything that looks suspicious.

Top Three - Marine Aquaria Screensavers

Note: I initially started the screensaver search when I started looking for something to replace my non-working AfterDark CD. I especially wanted a nice aquarium screensaver. The first 3 good aquaria remain the best of the screensavers I've found.
• Serene Screen (Marine) Aquarium is perhaps the best screensaver out there right now. This is the demo you'll find on the Windows XP Plus! pack, and I had to do a net search to find the original. The freeware download has no expiration - you just need to hit spacebar and type "testfish" to make the ugly black box go away. This is truly a work of art - the careful crafting and aesthetics truly distinguish this screensaver as art (if you're an artist-type you can see the quality). When ordering, check the security settings though.
• AquaReal (or Aqua Real) by DigiFish ... almost as good as Serene Screen, though not quite a work of art. It can even be set as the active desktop, which is cool. Interactive, configurable, fun to set the lighting colors, etc. Again, I had some problems with the security settings while ordering, but it does appear to be a legit company (Formosoft). The free demo download simply doesn't do the real thing justice in terms of looks, but it's reasonably fun to play with anyway.
• Sim Aquarium by Digital Illusions ... the background is what makes this aquarium screensaver stand out, and the very nice effects of colored lighting. The fish are OK. The free download expires in a few days. This screensaver requires a higher end system. Digital Illusions does other screensavers; however, the few I've looked at are not very impressive, at least compared to modern MMP game graphics (and in fact make me sea-sick).

  Other 3D and/or Animated Screensavers

• Lifeglobe is part of Prolific Publishing, and has used some of the Serene Screen technology to make this goldfish screensaver. It's almost as nice as the Serene Screen Marine Aquarium... but somehow just a little bit off. Still in beta, but worth checking up on.
• Alias | Wavefront (publishers of the Maya graphics package) have screensavers that are described as "must haves" on the Gizmo listing (below). The Paint Effects one is, IMHO, particularly cool if you want sort of surreally generated 3D designs.
• Celestia isn't a screensaver, but it came up on the screensaver thread on the Serene Screen fansite (in fact, that's where a lot of these came up). This space simulation is a free download and it's quite interesting to play with, though the moon and sun look too small from the earth.
• 3Planesoft's screensavers are fully 3D non-interactive environments with varying camera angles. I'm of two minds about them. On the one hand, having been in the cutting edge computer games industry among Hollywood effects-quality CG artists, some of these graphics look downright cheesy. On the other hand, if you limit the camera movement or camera angles, some of these screensavers can really grow on you. The fireplace one lets you put up a photo in a frame, and the clock tells time - if you stop the camera from doing its (IMHO) nauseating dips and close-ups, it's actually pretty nice. The watermill one has some terribly unrealistic water rendering and the shortcuts taken with the trees make me cringe, but the scenes from some of the camera angles are pretty nice, and they do some very nice effects with light and bird song. Anyway, for all that I'm complaining, these are some of the better screensavers out there these days.... There aren't any expiration DAYS on these, but the unregistered ones can't run for more than about a minute and a half until an annoying message pops up.
• Gizmozone screensavers are also 3D and screamingly colorful, though some of them (e.g., the butterly and Christmas tree) feel even more cutsey than 3Planesoft's. I thought I'd left six-sided jars behind in the cheesier days of MMP gaming, but if you're looking for a happy-happy-neverland style of screensaver, I guess these could fit the bill. The camera sort of does its meandering thing as it takes you around this world-within-a-snowglobe kind of reality. They have a LOT of screensavers, though, so it's worth a look over (the screensavers I tried are by Shortcut Software Development, but there are other devs too, and they pointed me to the Maya Paint Effects screensaver).
• Digimindsoft screensavers (they have a handful) include the fairly cool but motion-sickness inducing 3D Canyon Flight screensaver, and a ummm rather stiff "Aqua 3D" screensaver. Try out the canyon flight; I'd suggest leaving the Aqua 3D, however. Just my opinion.
• Aquatica at clubaquatica.com is another aquarium screensaver. They recently came out with a fully 3D screensaver, but it simply isn't (yet) up to par with the leaders in the field. Meanwhile, their old classic Aquatica screensaver has 3D fish models that don't swim in 3D - they swim back and forth in straight lines, much like the ancient fish screensavers from the early days of AfterDark. The free demo is OK to look at, and has no annoying messages or complaints. For a low-end system that can't for whatever reason handle 3D swimming, this may be one of the best and most user-editable marine aquarium screensaver around. But once you've seen Serene Screen, there's no going back.
• Ambient Reality screensavers... well, oddly, these silly things grew on me. I don't have the money to register, but they are kinda addictive. They have a cloud simulation that makes clouds roll across various postcard-like settings, and they also have a rippling water simulation (the type of Java applet thing on various websites) that ripples water on various (again) postcard-like settings. Sorta cheesy, but sorta addictive too. Plus, they have other abstract stuff I haven't gotten. Unfortunately the free demos expire in a set number of days, oh well.
• Nexus Media screensavers ... there are a lot of 'em. I tried the Winter Wonders Screensaver. It's disappointingly lacking in features compared to Seize the Day's Living Worlds (no lights in the houses, no day/night, no moving clouds), but the scenes are cute and cozy and the snow reasonably well done, so if I had $10 to burn I might've burned it. I also tried the "Amazing Waterfall," which unfortunately merely made me compare it unfavorably with the Seize the Day Living Worlds picture for May (which was a waterfall with a complex bridge and towers, complete with occasional night watchman). I've now also tried one of the aquariums... well, let's just say my opinion on best aquaria hasn't changed.
• QFlux has weird AI-run screensavers... interesting in theory, at least. Kinda weird to watch. Worth getting if you're into AI and neural nets and such.
• Atlantis 3D does DiveVisions and SharkVisions. The former is a marine diving screensaver (unlike a marine aquarium screensaver). The problem for me is the graphics - at least in the demo, the coral reefs are clearly objects that don't rest flat on the ground - they cast a shadow beneath them! This kind of breakage of suspension-of-disbelief hurts it badly in my book. However, the sensation of being underwater with fish swimming by is, apparently, fairly realistic and the demo is worth that, at least. The SharkVisions doesn't have the same feel, although the graphics are slightly better(?).
• FP Software Laboratory has some space-based screensavers and some fire simulation screensavers. The rotating Earth looks a bit glassy, but the clouds are their own separate layer, so that looks pretty cool at least. The unregistered one has an annoying cover-over window. The fire simulation stuff was apparently pretty cool, but I haven't gotten it....
• RI Soft Systems screensavers - another online company with a whole pile of screensavers - include a number of non-3D animated scenes of nature. The waterfalls aren't bad except for the very flat 2D birds, which I didn't like one bit. They have a reasonable free waterfalls desktop theme for download also. The other nature ones along the "Living Waterfalls" "living Wilderness" etc lines might be fine for some, but I personally will pass on them. But they have a whole LOT of other screensavers to try out, so.....
• Dreamscenes.net is Delfyn Software, which makes some interesting 2D generated landscapes, including the snowy landscapes that I tried out. Not exactly photorealistic, I don't exactly enjoy the time it takes to generate a snowy landscape, but it is interesting to watch and the idea behind all this is kinda cool. They have a lot of other stuff I haven't checked out yet ... maybe I'll check out the dolphins, who knows.
• Seraline ... haven't tried em, but it's fractal-themed. Fractals are fun!
• I went and looked at Freeze.com, but I did some internet research first, and I'd rather not deal with registering. They do come bundled with some adware or possibly spyware programs according to the internet.
• Comment on the screensavers that come with Windows XP, or which are free from Microsoft: these are somehow even lamer than the ones I seem to remember for Windows 95/98... maybe I'm wrong, but I thought there was at least an aquarium screensaver for Win 95.... The coolest XP Microsoft screensaver has got to be the Bliss one, with the rolling/forming clouds. The Amazing Windows XP one is starting to annoy me because it takes a minute to start when you're doing other things with your machine, during which you think your machine has frozen.

  Slideshow Screensavers

• Boston.com Screensavers - Boston Globe photographs in various themes: lighthouses, New England Patriots, Cape Cod, Boston at Night, Scenic Boston, Holiday Boston, Fall Foliage, Red Sox, and Tall Ships. These free screensavers actually feature some nice photography and are great for anyone who loves Boston.
• Guideposts has a number of simple slide show screensavers, as well as wallpaper. A sign-up is necessary, however.
• Stardust Software's Impressionist Paintings are OK. It's a slideshow, with some music.
• Max Taylor Panoramas ... This particular Max Taylor is an Australian photographer. The screensavers themselves are kinda annoying, what with very slow text (with missing pixels on my system), but the photographs are breathtaking. I can't even remember how I found this guy's site... I must've been searching for "waterfall" and "screensaver"....
• Most Windows boxes come with a slideshow set up program... use your own favorite pictures (or, say, National Geographic's free pictures) to set up your own slideshow.
• Greenpeace screensavers ... because I figured they'd have some, and because I'm a little pissed the Nature Conservancy and National Geographic no longer have any. Nope, haven't downloaded these, but at least they have 'em.
• The below no longer work:
• Nature Conservancy has this screensaver with some breathtaking photographs. Well, OK, it appears to be gone in 2004 :( Oh well.
• National Geographic free screensaver has 15 pictures but won't install on Windows NT or XP (sigh) ... but far better is their general photography, which is often available for download as desktop wallpaper and/or backgrounds. Worth a look, though their servers can be a bit slow. (Update: as of 2004, the screensaver download page is gone.)