Desktop background has burnt into screen...

Question

Level 1

31 points

Desktop background has burnt into screen...

I created a desktop background about a month ago which is a whole lot of words repeated really faint in the background, as grey and then over a full solid black... This was a month ago that I started to use this as my wallpaper... I turned on the computer today, and on the blue startup screen I could see the words were burnt in... For some reason the computer didn't shut down last night so the screen was like that for 9 hours, and didn't go to sleep... Could this be a temporary burn or is the screen F&^%'d?

Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Sep 8, 2009 3:02 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Sep 8, 2009 3:49 PM in response to Tom Synnott

9 hours should not cause a "burn in." Plus LCD's are less susceptible to permanent burn-in. CRTs are much more susceptible, which is why screen savers where invented. This is because CRTs have phosphors that emit the light; they lose their luminance faster if an image is permanently displayed.

What you noted is probably something called transient image persistence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_persistence

You may want to use the Mac OS X feature to change the desktop image every X minutes. I have a set (images of the day from NASA.gov) and the image gets changed at one hour intervals.

Reply

Answer 2

den.thed

Level 10

91,534 points

Sep 8, 2009 5:04 PM in response to Tom Synnott

Hi Tom

It's temporary and to add to what Kenichi say's, here's Apple's take on image persistence.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2807

Also note: in System Preferences > Energy Saver > Sleep that the Display(s) can be set to Sleep at any given amount of time and I recommend setting the display to sleep after 10 to 15 min of inactivity. Not only will sleeping the display save you energy, but it will also prevent image persistence and extend the life of the display.

Dennis

Reply