Huge Screensaver Files (71MB) Drawbacks for Users?

[chickenbone]

What are the drawbacks of having huge screensaver files? I've created large .SCR files with your tools and I do not see a problem with performance although I have a relatively fast machine. I want to sell my screensaver with 80 1024x768 images, but it's 71MBs. Is this going to be a big problem for users? I hate to cut down the quality of the images or the number of them Thanks.

[chickenbone]

You're telling me NO ONE has made screensavers this big??? I can't believe no one has a comment on this. What is the largest SCR file you all have created 5MB, 10MB, 15MB? Come on, speak up. What's your view of this? Am I doomed if I create a 70MB file for consumers to download??? I'm not convinced that I am. Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

[Karlis]

Well the downside is that the screensaver takes lots of disk space and it could work not so good on old computers that have very little of memory and system resources. However on most PCs there should be no problems.

Anyway, I would suggest you to optimize your images - save them as JPEGs, this will increase the screensaver size dramatically without any noticeable quality loss.

You can try www.irfanview.com tool for optimizing big images. Just open the original image and save it as JPEG with a quality setting of 80 - 90.

[samstern]

What are the drawbacks of having huge screensaver files? I've created large .SCR files with your tools and I do not see a problem with performance although I have a relatively fast machine. I want to sell my screensaver with 80 1024x768 images, but it's 71MBs. Is this going to be a big problem for users? I hate to cut down the quality of the images or the number of them Thanks.

Hi,

We created a 300MB screen saver that is a good seller. Any system with less than 256 megs of real memory tends to run rahte rslowly with the screen active (but speeds right up when the screen saver is banished). So the impacts are:

1) Lower memory computers have a problem. Set your minimum memory requirements to the size of the screen saver or users might report problems. If you have a big screen saver, I would recommend that you set the minum needed system to a system with 256MB of memory and running Windows 2000 or later.
2) downloads of the screen saver is a real problem. anything large is hard for dial up users to download.
3) Uploads to shareware sites will often time out. simtel.net is especailly problematic when the screensaver size reaches over about 30MB in size. Also, transfering the screensaver via frontpage to a web host is painfully slow.

other than the above issues, we are selling 3 screen savers in the 25-50mb range and several larger screen savers as well.

[chrisjlocke]

300MB screensaver?! Wowsers! Thats bigger than an install of Win98!

[Karlis]

omg wow