After getting down on free screensavers for the last few days, I hesitate to post another “free screensaver” story. However, I just came across this truly freeware aquarium screensaver!

Fantastic 3d Fish Aquarium Screensaver 2.5 requires no charge to download it. You don’t have to give your name, email address or anything else. There is only one version, no demo, no trialware, no upsells!

The animations are a little spastic and all the fish seem to wiggle at the excact same rate, but hey it’s really free! It has a few nifty options like adding your own background and turning off the bubbles. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like you can add more than the default 4 fish.

The Good: Real Freeware!

The Bad: Jerky animations

The Ugly: A really long name for a freeware aquarium screensaver of this size and with this amount of options

• Download it here.
• Visit ScreenSaverFX.com
• $0

After posting my lengthy rant about free screensavers yesterday, I thought it might be useful to go through the experience of installing one of these creatures and writing about it. I hope you get a vicarious thrill out of it!

I picked one of the most popular free aquarium screensavers created by freeze.com. It’s called Living Marine Aquarium 2. I’m sure you’ve seen it on many sites, especially if you have searched for “free aquarium screensavers.” What follows is a blow by blow account of my experience.

First I went to the download page using this link. This took me to a page with a giant “download now” button, which leads to a direct download of an installation file. So far, so good.

Now that the file was on my hard drive, I double clicked the file to begin the installation. Immediatly the program wanted to connect to the internet and activated my firewall. I clicked “allow” a few times which finally brought up the actual installation program. Who knows what information has already been transmitted from my computer at this point!

continue reading "Living Marine Aquarium 2 - My “free” screensaver experience"

Aqua Garden is one of the best aquarium screensavers I have seen in some time. Unlike other fish screensavers, this is truly an aquarium screensaver.

All the featured fish (35!) are freshwater fish, the kind you would find in pet stores and hobby aquariums across the country. The backgrounds do not pretend to be anything other than great looking home aquariums. The tank graphics look vibrant with bright green plants and fun multi-colored fish.

Aqua Garden has the usual Formosoft features like feeding and tickling the fish, but it also has a new “follow fish” setting.

Since Aqua Garden supports up to three monitors, the tanks are much wider than a single monitor. Essentially, if you watch the screensaver with a single monitor, you are only viewing a third of the total tank. To make this concept more appealing to people with only one monitor (most of us!), you can select a fish to follow as it swims through the entire fish tank. The background will simply scroll along behind the selected fish! Of course, you can also manually scroll from side to side manually.

The Aqua Garden screensaver is a breath of fresh air amidst the poorly constructed aquarium screensavers I find all over the net. I highly recommend this to any fan of aquariums, and also to anyone looking for a fresh screensaver to brighten their computer.

The Good: Bright and clean look.

The Bad: Fish occasionally swim through objects!

The Ugly: The writing on their sales page…

• Download the Aqua Garden Demo
• Visit aquagardenscreensaver.com
• Buy Aqua Garden Screensaver $19.95

I really wanted to like this screensaver. My hopes were high because I often come across enthusiastic descriptions of Aqua 3D Screensaver on download sites. Unfortunately, I think the descriptions are a function of good marketing, not quality.

I am not sure about the full version (I just couldn’t bring myself to spend $14.95 after playing with the demo), but the demo comes with a measly 4 fish! From what I can tell from the DigiMinds site, the full version does not contain any extra fish.

The animation of the fish in Aqua 3D Screensaver is really terrible. The fish barely move their bodies as they swim, and they look like they are about to die or something. Quite sad.

This screensaver should be free at best. I really can’t recommend it to anyone looking for a decent aquarium screensaver.

The Good: Nothing.

The Bad: Poor selection of fish and customization options.

The Ugly: Everything else.

• If you must, download the demo.
• Visit the Digimind site.
• If you really must, buy it here. $14.95

VR Aquarium is like an old friend. It is not the most exciting or fresh screensaver out there, but I always come back to it.

VRA is really more of a game than a traditional screensaver. You get the most out of it when you interact and play around with all the fun features.

It is refreshing to see an aquarium screensaver that does not take itself too seriously. The animation is a little outdated and cartoonish, but it more than makes up for it with it’s interactive elements. In fact, this screensaver is ideal for younger children as they can play with the fish and relate to them better.

One of the better features is the “construction yard” where you build your own tank. You set it up with plants, ornaments and fish. You can save multiple tanks and come back to edit them any time you like.

Of course, as with all Formosoft products, there is the ability to feed and tickle the fish. VR Aquarium offers multiple foods to feed the fish, including the strange pizza option (?).

I would highly recommend this screensaver to families with younger children. However, if you prefer a casual screensaver with some neat interactive features, you should definitely check out the demo!

The Good: Lots of interactive features.
The Bad: Feels a tad outdated.
The Ugly: Horrible text on their sales page, it reads like a child wrote it.

• No Demo Available
• Visit VRaquarium.com.
• Support this site: Buy VR Aquarium here! $21.95