T & P SC Screen Savers, our TopTenREVIEWS Bronze Award winner, is one of the few screensaver services we reviewed that provides product for both Windows and Mac operating systems. So if Macs are your cup of tea, this site is for you.
They don’t have the medley of categories or the quantity of images our higher ranked services offer and as with all the others, there is no guarantee downloads will be adware and virus free. They do make an effort to explain that they are not a supporter of adware or spyware.
This site states their products are not bundled or wrapped with adware/spyware; however, they do contain links to other sites and consequently the risk of adware or spyware does exist. In the FAQ section of their website they explain their site is adware free while some of their vendors may not hold the same set of standards. However, most of the products available are not from vendors but from the webmaster.
When downloading any program off the Internet, we recommend using anti-virus and anti-spyware software to provide protection against harmful programs that can threaten your
They welcome Mac users and provide products especially designed for the operating systems. These are great features that are hard to find. The products that work on a Mac are mixed in with all the other products. We used a simple find box on the browser window to easily locate the files that would work for the Mac on each page.
Like our top rated sites they offer picture previews and descriptions. Although the previews aren’t visible at all times. We feel it is important to be able to compare and contrast the image’s sharpness. The picture previews are visible when you click on the link that says “screen shot.”
We feel that if they would provide Mac users with more options by broadening their database, they could easily increase their ranking on this site.
We navigated through a popup-ad-free environment; this always puts smiles on our faces. All the links provided by this service are current and load quickly, making site navigation a cinch. You’ll also want to disable any popup blockers to ensure problem-free downloads.
They’re not as organized or professional looking as some of the other screensaver service websites we visited. We felt there were too many long lists and were slightly irritated by the picture previews not available unless we clicked on the links. While the pictures are useful in determining if we wanted to download the file, we grew tired of all required clicking. A small thumbnail image in the list would have been nice.
We also wanted a search box. While we did use the find option on the browser, we wanted something that could look through the entire archive and find what we wanted. This would have helped us find the Mac products more readily as well as other specific images.
There are ads located everywhere on the page, some of them look like links of the actual site. Be careful about accidentally clicking on an ad link and going to another site. Most of the site links start with “Screen Shot and Download.”
Overall, the setup of the site was a bit cramped. There isn’t even a logo for the site and everything is in a long list. We wanted a little more room and fewer ads.
T & P SC Screen Saver states that every entry undergoes virus and adware/spyware scans before placed on their site. We looked and looked but were unable to prove them wrong. The picture quality of the images is also about average when compared to the other sites we reviewed.
On the FAQs section of the site, they provide a warning for monitors not a specific resolution. This could cause a great looking image to become distorted and the quality to decrease. By taking simple precautions as to noting the resolution, this problem can be avoided. They make a point of mentioning which resolutions will work with the product.
Our favorite category is an archive section with older products they’ve put back into service due to high demand. This section wasn’t large but had some nice images.
They have enough product that a greater number of categories would make searching easier. They do have sub categories at the top of some of the pages. Some of these are linked to other websites and there was no way to differentiate between them. The categories provided tended to be on the holiday side of things. We wanted more of a variety of choices instead of four different Christmas categories, most of which led to other sites.
There is no discernable order to the products. We assume they are chronological but no dates are visible to prove either way.
There is a very straightforward FAQs section. Within the FAQs, they explain how to install and uninstall the product. They also note the screen resolution of your computer. This information is useful when trying to determine if the product will work on your monitor. If the screen resolution is off too much, then the picture will either appear too large or small.
The company also provides email tech support as well as a link to the webmaster’s MySpace page.
They have a section for marketing tools. The links that they provide seem like they contain decent information on this subject. However, we did not take any time to look into these links.
T & P SC Screen Savers is a service Mac users should check out as it’s the only service where we found desktop themes for Macs, and it offers many products the other Mac-friendly screensaver services don’t. While this site may not have quite the selection of the other sites, it is unique that the webmaster creates much of the artwork.
