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I got caught up in my previous post griping about ads and I forgot the real reason I made the post, so here it is.
I've never really felt any need to jailbreak a Kindle but I can think of features that would tempt me to do so and one would be the ability to completely do away with screensavers.
Those of you old enough will remember that screensavers were invented, literally, to save our screens. CRT screens that remained the same too much of the time got the image burned into them. That was an uncommon but occasional problem before the days of GUI's but it became a serious problem when GUI's came along. So programs were created to keep the screen from burning in by changing it to something else when it wasn't being actively used. Later the OS's began to include that important feature.
Since the demise of CRT screens screensavers have been mostly ornamental. They're a nice but not very important feature.
On an e-ink screen I'm not sure they're so nice and, if anything, they're detrimental. Not a lot, but at least a little bit, since the only time screens draw power is when they're changed. Screensavers add a few seemingly unneeded changes. Actually I don't know that they're unneeded since there might be some concern with e-ink burn-in, but I've never heard that there is so my guess is it's purely ornamental.
What I think would be ideal would be to simply leave the text on the screen, as it was when the device went to sleep. Perhaps the word "Sleeping" could appear unobtrusively in the bottom margin. Then when I'm ready to read I can just pick up the device and begin reading as it turns on. The word "Sleeping" could go away to let me know it was on.
As clever as the design of ereaders is I think some "features" aren't at all well thought out and this is one of them.
Barry
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