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What is a Kindle screensaver?

The Kindle is a popular e-reader, a device for reading electronical books (ebooks), from online retailer Amazon. The device ships with a number of "screensavers", and if you have ever come across a reference to screensavers in relation to the Kindle e-reader, you may be wondering: what purpose is there for screensavers on an e-reader?

What's the point of a Kindle screensaver?

A Kindle screensaver serves a purpose similar to that of a screensaver on modern operating systems like Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Screensavers are, in both cases, primarily included for entertainment purposes, since they no longer actually protect your display from getting damaged by "screen burn". Basically, whenever your Kindle e-reader goes to sleep, whether automatically or at your request, a "screensaver" is displayed full-screen, temporarily replacing the image on the device's display until you wake it up again.

To save power, this screensaver is simply a static image that generally only changes between sleep-wake cycles. The Kindle 3, for example, includes a series of electronic ink portraits of famous authors like Virginia Woolf, Ralph Ellison, Mark Twain and Jane Austen.

Password protection

Similar to Windows and OS X, you can password protect your Kindle so that, upon waking it from sleep, a password needs to be entered before your books can be accessed.

As such, a Kindle screensaver is very similar to a traditional screensaver, the only difference being that, to spare the battery, the image on your display does not frequently change as it would in a traditional slideshow or animated screensaver.

Changing your Kindle's screensaver

Unfortunately, to change the screensaver on your Kindle, you are required to "jailbreak" the device. Since this involves, as the name suggests, breaking into your device, this may actually stop the e-reader from functioning properly, and may also interfere with your product guarantee. Therefore, this should only be attempted by advanced users.

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