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"

Whenever I see a business offer something for free I instinctively ask myself “what’s it going to cost me?”

The truth is, there is no such thing as free products from businesses. Sure, you can find products that don’t require a monetary exchange, but make no mistake about it, there is a cost.

For example, a cell phone carrier offers you a free phone. But really, the phone is not “free” because you usually have to commit yourself to using their services for a year. So, your “free” phone really costs you $39.95/mo (or some similar amount). Sure, you get phone service with that, but I guarantee you they more than recoup their cost for giving you that $20 “free” phone. In addition, your new phone carrier now has you as a captive advertising audience for a full year! I just switched carriers and I am bombarded with “special offers” to upgrade my plan, to download ring-tones, music, pictures etc. Free phone eh?

What does this have to do with screensavers? Well a very similar business model is used by companies who offer “free” screensavers. They create some desirable screensavers and allow you to install them without any monetary exchange. They do, however, require you to install a browser toolbar, or sign up for 25 “newsletters” (SPAM ALERT!), or download some “special” installation program which installs god-knows-what on your computer!

So, is a free screensaver really free? As our dear ex-president might have put it, it depends on your definition of “free.” If by free you mean you don’t have to pay you actual currency for it, then yes. If by free you mean that you get the screensaver with absolutely no strings attached, then no! My time is worth something and I have a lot better things to do than to fight spam, uninstall entrenched browser bars and deal with incessant pop-ups.

Rather than spend a bunch of my time and pay with a fistful of frustration, I’d rather just buy a decent screensaver and know that the transaction is over. Paying $20 for a screensaver really isn’t much compared to all the so-called “free screensavers” out there. With a full version of a really nice screensaver I can actually spend some extra time playing or watching my fish!