As I've recently been on a nostalgic trip around my dreams, my youth and things, I have been reminiscing. I would have to tell you that I am a huge geek. I love tech, and tech loves me. But this bromance has been on through my life. One of my biggest geek feelings was during college. There was a channel and a show I used to be a fan of. Its name is TechTV and the show is The Screen Savers, with Leo Laporte and Patrick Norton.
For people that had the chance to watch this show, this was THE SHOW about everything tech, mostly consumer technology. This means all the things around your computer, what software to look for, peripherals, new announcements in trade shows and everything you could think of to become a power user of tech.
So when I was in college, I had a lot of access to cable and TVs since every dorm had one, as well as social areas. So you could basically go to your friend's room or walk down to the cafeteria and watch whatever you wanted. My favorite channels were BET for everything music, MTV of course, CNBC for financial news, and then there was TechTV, the premier technology channel. The channel had different shows such as Call for Help, interesting documentaries and interviews on shows such as Big Thinkers, and in primetime there was The Screen Savers.
So what was so great about this show? Well, for once the hosts were hilarious and very charismatic. Leo was a jolly guy who always laughed and was willing to take on any task with humor, making you feel that he was in control of technology. This was transmitted to the audience, as many people even started to reach out to talk to their companies about tech. In the imagination of the audience, they were uber programmers and scientists who just dominated technology like magicians. Leo sometimes had to say on his show, we are just TV hosts, we don't go to our houses and sit at this super high-tech command center. We are just regular guys.
So the Screen Savers hosts were Leo Laporte and Patrick Norton. I already talked about Leo, but Patrick was a more laid-back and technical dude who was more focused on the hardware side of tech. Basically, all things about video cards, overclocking processors, cooling systems, and a whole lot of improvements people could do to their computers or even build one themselves. Patrick was more of an engineer in the operational sense, but the dynamic between Patrick and Leo was magical.
Anyway, the show itself had different sections. They ran a webcam network where people would record video mail to them in order to submit their questions for the show. This was done with the idea of making the web more visual, as much of the web in the 2000s was text-based, and not everyone had a webcam like we do now with phones. But the few who had one were encouraged to use it and call into the show with their questions.
The next section was something called Show and Tell where they presented cool gadgets, peripherals, and new software that was out and available to get. After that, it was the Download of the Day or sometimes renamed to the Site of the Nite, which featured a cool website or free software to explore and learn what it could do for you. It was a great segment for finding things to do after the show was over.
Then came the tip section, which was split between Windows Tips or Tweaks and the Mac Minute. Sorry, no Linux tips, which would have been amazing to have, but Linux users weren't as common to find in the wild back then. After that, it was time for the modders or hardware tinkerers who performed customization on PC hardware. Yoshi was the main guy to perform such mods, and Patrick also handled parts of the show dedicated to building a rig from scratch.
The final part of the show was the Geek library, mostly great books to get about specific areas of computer whenever it would be about using Photoshop, cybersecurity, programming, or better tips for your PC or even digital life.
The show it itself was wonderful, thankfully many people have rescue many videos from such a time.
Unfortunately after college, I wasn't able to access TechTV as much, and I lost contact with the show, and eventually discovered Leo was fired from TechTV as the channel no longer exist. Then Leo returned with a vengeance on TWiT. But that's for another time.
Have you heard about the screensavers? Did you ever watch the show?
