First developed as a program to literally save your screen, screensavers were designed to prevent “burn-in” on old CRT monitors. Back before LCD saved the day, images left on a screen for too long would actually “burn into” the screen, leaving a ghost image when you turned the monitor off. Thankfully, Microsoft turned this problem into an endless source of entertainment, that at least leaves me a little nostalgic.

Here’s our 7 favorite screensavers from the beige computer days: