| What does DPMS mean? |
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| Display Power Management System, correctly referred to as VESA DPMS as it is a VESA standard. This is the replacement for screen savers. Screen savers either blank the monitor, or continually change the images painted on the screen. They do this because prolonged continuous exposure of the screen phosphor to an electron beam can cause degradation of the phosphor. This is especially true of older monitors, but can occur in newer ones. If the phosphor becomes damaged from prolonged exposure to the same screen image (a login screen or your Windows background) permanent ghosting patterns may result. DPMS does one step better than a screen saver and actually saves energy too by 1) turning off the video signal to your screen after a period of inactivity which puts most newer monitors into a standby mode or 2) shutting your monitor off. For some new monitors, 1 & 2 are the same, as these monitors are in a low-power standby mode even when apparently turned off. DPMS is often implemented with CPU power saving (i.e. Intel 486SL enhanced CPU's) and hard drive power-down circuitry. They are all based on the same idea: when a device is idle, slow it down or shut it off entirely to save energy. Sometimes this can be an inconvenience, since the computer may be busy performing some operation without any keyboard, mouse or screen activity. |
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