about monitors?

Question

i want to know, or if somebody knows a proof about this>> which one saves the monitor's life (CRT)
-----Letting it go on standby after few minutes or
-----Just letting it open even without use (usually while downloading or afk for several hours)?
any sites linking to this myth is appreciated (myth for me for now)
thanks

Answer 1

There are three factors here, two on general electronics, on on CRTs:

On the electronics. There are two things that you can do you reduce the life of electronics. One is to use them (surprise!) the other is to turn them on and off. That things wear out when you use them is not that surprising. But when you turn electronics on or off then there is a thermal shock that has an effect.

As a general rule the thermal shock is equivalent to about an hours of use. Some components more, some less. That would suggest you set the power management to 1 hour. But if you are away for 20 minutes, then you are probably going to be away for longer. I set my power management to turn off the monitor after 30 minutes.


For CRTs whenever you have a picture on the screen you are wearing away the phosphors. The brighter the picture the worse it is. Having a static picture is the worst you can do as you wear away the phosphor to match the picture. After a while when you put up a full white screen you see a negative image of whatever has been burnt into the screen.

Some so-called screen savers are terrible for this, either only using part of the screen, or having a static part to the image.

Leaving your desktop up while you let the computer download files will eventually burn your desktop image into the phosphor of the CRT.

I would recommend a screen saver like the star-field screen saver to come on within a couple of minutes of inactivity.

Answer 2

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