Yeah, find the Minimal Screensaver and use that instead. It works great!

I have been using this screen saver for probably a year now and have just come to realize some of the problems with this saver. I downloaded it because I wanted a screen saver to lock my computer while I'm away. However, since I run a web server and several other processes I do not want a flashy screen saver that will hog the CPU drawing its pretty pictures. This is why I thought this one would be perfect. Today, while the screensaver was running I SSH'd into my box, ran top, and realized that the screensaver was using between 15% and 20% of the CPU. That sure is a lot of CPU time to do "nothing."

Perfect. Ideal for those short times when I'm called away from my desk and I want the screen to blank in my absence but I'll not be gone long enough to merit sleeping the display.

Why did this ability get lost in the Mac OS?

Why people want a screen saver that dances lights and pictures all over the screen when they're away from the computer and not there to see it doesn't make sense to me.

So what it when the computer sleeps it does the same thing.