Real nice screenie. Thanks GOTD!

Stay clear. Troublesome & erratic , I give it the boot, too many time wasting crashes

Thanks again GOTD for this free offering.

There are some hard edges on graphics that could have looked better 'smoothed out' (quite noticeable on the piles of snow leading up to one of the houses) but overall it looks like a lot of work went into this screensaver.

It has quite a magical atmosphere, as in a storybook setting (for both children and adults to enjoy). The music as with the previous screensavers from AG seems to have a split-second pause at times but it's not too annoying (perhaps as some have suggested for other 'delays', I just need to play with the settings).

After purposely watching this screensaver run for up to 20 minutes - at which point I really had to stop fixating on the monitor (hypnosis was setting in :-p) - I had expected to see the sequence of shots (at the various angles) repeat themselves in a loop. This did not happen so it appears that Astro Gemini didn't cut any corners providing new shots of the scenery for as long as the screensaver is running.

All in all, a lovely winter screensaver.

I wasn't able to download this screensaver the last time it was offered as I was running low on hard drive space. This is a much better one than the snowman one that was offerd at Christmas. Installed fine on Vista Home Premium 32bit. TUrned off the music, but I like the animation of a winters night. Relaxing and nicely done.

I'm up in Canada, it's cold and there is more than enough snow, but at least we don't have to shovel this snowfall!! I also like that it is more of a secluded setting rather than the busy city in which I live.

#46, I would also love a really good fireplace screensaver with the sound of the crackling logs, but no musiv with it. How about it GOTD team?

Thanks GOTD!!

If you have to make it a weekly thing to put up a screensaver I dare say that there are more than 2 companies that produce them. Why not offer some freeze.com screensavers? Now they know how to produce a screensaver. I would never touch their free ones that include adds but I did get one of their full version ones and I must say they are most impressive. As for Astro Gemini and 3d-planesoft I would have to say that neither one of them impress me with their graphics.

The view out my window looks better. It's higher resolution, animated, and bigger.

Thanks GOTD. I'm here in tropical florida (it was 78 and sunny today) and this snow scene screensaver was just what I needed. Installed fine on Vista and runs fine on nvidia 7900gto. Now to go mow the lawn.

Up here in the northern hemisphere there is enough snow and cold. Could we please get a nice warm (beach, fireplace, bonfire etc.) screensaver please. :-)

ENOUGH WITH ALL THE SCREENSAVERS ALREADY!!!

Barely anyone uses screensavers any more, and even if I did, I wouldn't need dozens of them...

I like this one. No problem installing on XP2 what so ever. As far as Astro Gemini having poor screen savers.....The Last Watch is one of the nicest SS I have seen to date. Glad I snagged it when I did. No complaints here, the price I just paid for this was pretty fine ; )

I woke up and turned on the weather this morn at 8, was -25C/-13F here. Real cold days have yet to come also.

Hey, I still like this screen saver, and when I get sick of the snow and cold. Will watch it when it goes into the +30C temps and up this summer!!

Thanks GOTD!!!!

Graphic is worst than a year 1999 video game. If you are into buying screen savers thats worth your money, go for Dream Aquarium or Viva Media screensavers.

This is good since it's free otherwise it wouldn't interest me

I personally enjoy the Astro Gemini screensavers, and I appreciate reruns of some things. This was one I didn't have yet. I wish the dinosaurs one would be rerun so I could put it on my laptop too. I've never had any problem with Astro Gemini screensavers or manager program on XP or Vista machine and in fact, I enjoy the fact that their screensaver manager lets me choose which screensavers I want to run, and rotates between them.

BTW what happened to the GAME giveaways this weekend? I didn't see any notice on the blog of why there isn't a game today.

Installed great on Vista and runs spectacular on even the highest setting. Looks nice, the sounds are pleasant, and my nine month niece will just get a kick out of watching it. Thanks!

#4 How can it crash a computer while downloading? If you are not lying then it was Windows/your computers fault. Not it it crashed during the install it would be a bit more believable. Or even it it crashed when it was running I may be able to believe that. But while downloading? Wtf man. I hate the people who come on the comments and lie. It is very annoying. SO STOP!!!!!!!

someone commented 'With minus 18C in real life outside? No thnx.'

where do you live? bbbbbrrrrrroooooooggghhhh

actually that should be seen as a benefit. it gives you the nice side of winter without having to leave your desk and go out into the freezing cold. :)

others have complained about it in comparison to other developers SS's. if theirs is offered for free fair enough.

but i installed it and am very happy with it. especially as it's free.

there's just no pleasing some people. :(

I think it is pretty cool! Thanks for the free download!

Upon reading my own previous comment, perhaps I wasn't very clear.

The voting part is OK, but what I meant was there ought to be a way to flag or indicate (say, with an icon beside the comment number) those comments being left by someone who has not yet installed the GAOTD software offer versus someone who actually has.

Even more telling might be to also detect and display the time span between when the activation occurred following the completion of installation, and when the comment was posted. Perhaps then we could better judge how much time the commenter spent evaluating/reviewing the product (5 minutes or an hour).

That might seem a bit intrusive to some folks ("You mean they're tracking my movements and behavior?! That's draconian! What's next, a spyware security breach?..."), but as long as no personal info is being recorded I think it would lead to more useful and constructive discussion.

Not artsy fartsy, smooth or complete, but a peaceful, nice little screensaver. One thumb up.

#19 Briar

When you vote, the vote counter on your copy of the web page is updated to reflect the votes of others that accumulated during the time you first opened the page and began reading, and then finally voted.

During the beginning of a GAOTD offer and popular times of a weekday or weekend day with lots of other people doing the same thing it is more likely to see strange voting results than, say, towards the end of the offer, when fewer are still coming to visit the page.

That's been my experience.

Personally I wish they would have two votes: one for "popular appeal" of the concept of the product, and another for the "implementation experience".

The first "popular appeal" vote would basically continue what they already have now (just rename it and explain its intended purpose). Visitors to this page could just drop by, comment and/or vote and yak and yammer away about what's better/worse than the offer of the day without really requiring that they actually download, install and use it.

Being able to cast the second "implementation experience" vote would depend on detecting that the software offer was actually installed/activated at least once for a given user. It would seem reasonably easy to do since this website already appears to be able to sense that I've voted "thumbs up/down" on the offer and/or on individual's comments and not let me vote again on this or any other day (from my location).

Perhaps they do it with a cookie, but I think they track it from their server end via either my GAOTD login name (so I am permitted to post these comments) or via my IP address since I can cast votes using one of the machines on my LAN and afterwards not be able to vote from another.

If the GAOTD folks would tie arriving at their "Activation" web page (that always results after installing the offer) into permitting an "implementation experience" vote, I think we, GAOTD, and the software donators would get a much more accurate idea of the appeal of their product and the improvements/likes/dislikes needed.

Certainly we would finally be able to separate the "casual" comments from those comments based on actual experience with the product.

Also, even with the existing system, it would be nice to be able to see the total vote count follow the "comments" votes.

Presently there is no way of knowing whether a comment with a "useful" score of, say, (-4) was the result of 100 votes "yes" and 104 votes "no" (indicating a controversial comment of high interest and value) or simply 4 votes "no" (a comment of not much concern and without much value).

Perhaps it is a website traffic-indicator statistic the GAOTD folks do track, but have purposefully chosen not to display for some reason. (Say, they want to control their business image as a popular site when contacting potential software donators/developers.)

Now let's see just how popular my own comment is today! Keep up the good work, GAOTD, and personally I do like occasional nice seasonal screensavers like today's offer.

Thumbs down. I get the sound but no visual. This is the first Astro Gemini screen saver that failed to work for me.

I was so happy to see today's giveaway, as I have just reformatted my favourite PC and wanted a nice screen saver. I particularly like Astro Gemini's screen saver manager, as it allows me to cycle through all of my screen savers, not just theirs.

This is a beautiful screen saver. I enjoy both Astro Gemini's and Plane's screen savers, so look forward to seeing more of them in the future.

I have to agree with Liz (#13), it looks very pretty but I'm sick of looking at snow. ;) How about a nice tropical beach scene screensaver?

Besides, I need a better computer before I go downloading stuff I don't really need.

I'm passing on this one but thanks GAOTD and Astro Gemini.

System instability rocks!
Besides locking up my system, it didn't play very well with dual monitors on my ATI card.

I guess I'll stick with the @Home project screen savers... Not very pretty, but at least I feel like I'm doing something with my idle CPU time...

Although I'm not a great fan of screen savers, I do know a man who is. His daughters love this one, nice one GAOTD and thanks.

19. OK It goes like this. While you are reading all the other comments life goes on in the background. When you click on your choice your computer displays updated info of what others voted in the meantime. That is why some zeros actually mean its 50/50. Don't worry it took me a while to clue in.
As to the screensaver, it would have been nice in November. Today I just look out the window in Toronto and see the same beatiful snowfall. I might downloaded later.
Team please let us know here about todays lack of Gamegiveaway. If the GAME team is home sick with the flue surely you would know.

Additional comment from #18...I totally agree with you. If you don't like, don't install it. Not every single "purchased" item bought has a perfect scorecard on downloading and installing. Thank you GOTD for offering product to us.

Downloaded on Vista works fine. Agree with above comments regarding graphics. Nothing to write home about. Nice that it's a seasonal theme and not a holiday theme for a change. Would I buy this product, no. Not worth the money.

In truth, I can't stand the cheesy screensavers by this company or 3 Plain Soft! I agree with #10 and anyone not liking that can hammer this comment because I could care less.
It runs perfectly on my Vista Ultimate to but I think it needs a NVIDIA graphics card to display properly on Vista. #10, I'd help you with a key if I had a way to get it to you!
It's really nice in the full version. The best I've ever seen, by far!

Okay, the final additions for today’s free games have been added, Wizzard has pitched in with a game called Frontman a third/first person take on pacman and I’ve added several more games that include a couple of retro style space shooters called Battle Space an Asteroids clone and Gamma Brothers an R-Type clone, plus a Zelda like adventure game with hundreds of additional levels (plus a levels editor) called Dink Smallwood a Snakes game called Ant Academy and finally an interesting puzzle game called Hexxagon:

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/4586


Hi John,

Do you have a graphics card installed on your computer? If you do, try updating your graphics drivers and your DXdiag files. Depending upon what graphics card you have you're most likely to have either an ATI or an NVidia graphics card. the sites can be Googled and you'll find the latest drivers at each site. The latest DX Diag files can be downloaded from Microsoft. These are not DX10 supported programs so download the latest version of DX9.

If you don't have a graphics card then your motherboards graphic chip probably isn't powerful enough to cope with the screensavers graphics.

regards

WR

Thanks GOTD very nicely done. I'm in Maine so it's a tad too realistic...lol.
Just a quick note to those that comment I am always taken aback by the criticism and rude remarks some feel the need to express!
It's free for God sakes if yo have no need or desire don't download it and if it doesn't install or run properly don't assume it's the software.
Much more likely it's your screwed up computer.
I have enjoyed using some fine software from GOTD thanks again.

Installed on XP fine. I use a dual monitor setup and it would only run on the secondary monitor and caused all my icons and programs on the primary monitor to flicker on and off like some crappy special effects gone wrong. Then I couldnt shutdown unless I did a hard reboot.
Deleted this program.

I have read the comments before I installed this so I was pleasantly suprised to see that the screensaver was much better than I expected.
Alot of work goes into the making of the screensavers so credit where credit is due, the makers did an excellent job here to set the atmosphere. Full marks from me to what is an excellent product and many thanks to this website for making it all possible, and making us so privilaged to get it all for free, we all should indeed be grateful as in this day and age you don't get much for free without a catch to it. To me this is a genuine and honest site and those wingers who have the audacity to give negs should be respectfully reminded that this has cost them nothing !
Keep up the good work and thanks once again for allowing us to have what we would otherwise have to pay dearly for.
Mike

Downloaded ok, unzipped ok. after running setup, I got a textbox saying "unable to init. Please reinstall manager". Tried a few times with same result. Downloaded/unzipped again with same result.
Running XP sp2, 2.8 processor, 2gb memory, 250gb HDD so shouln't be any problem.
From the comments made and the thumbs down presently at 76%, I don't think I am going to waste any more time on this.

I wish someone would explain the GOTD voting system. I checked out this offering, was not impressed, and decided to vote against it. My one vote counted as 4 votes. What gives? I know from months of being a frequent visitor to the site, lots of commenters are not happy with the rating system for various reasons, but shouldn't 1 vote register as 1 vote, not 4 votes?

p.s.

b.t.w. I meant to add that today's screensaver is quite a reasonable one for this time of year. (Well for the northern hemisphere where snow is common in winter). It's a typical village scene with snowman, pleasant music and configurable visuals, so this screensaver should run on most systems. If you find its a little jerky just go into the settings menu and reduce the snow fall or the wind speed. You can also turn off the music, enable frames per second and toggle between a 12 hour and 24hour clock or no clock.

With -12° actual temperature in France I really don't even dare to see a picture of ice piece, so a thanks to GAOD

It looks like there’s no game giveaway this weekend, so I've decided to extend the weekday giveaway project to this weekend to ensure the gamers amongst you get you're weekend games fix. So far I've posted details and download links for Squarez Deluxe a really interesting puzzle game and Jet pack a platform game with a difference.

So as to ensure that everyone gets something I'm going to post more games later to cover more genres. Though it could be later this evening (UK time) that I get around to posting more games because the kid’s will be back from Gymnastics soon and I always let them reign supreme over the desktops during Saturday afternoon. :)

Follow the link below for details of the games. I've placed a reminder about Gamehouse games as well. - Just for the uninitiated; Gamehouse, a well respected games developer and distributor are giving a full version commercial quality game away every day, though you do get an 18 second advert popping up every few levels. Also don't forget to check back later if you're interested in more games:

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/4586#post-49076

===========================================================================================

It's a shame that the last three or four screensavers are repeats as I love the screensaver day; I always look forwards to the anticipation as to what we're going to get; and have collected virtually all of the screensavers given away here.

Though I appreciate that some won't have been around the first time they were given away, so I shouldn't sound so ungrateful....

Thankfully,, there are probably only a few that I really want now and I may just buy those now that it looks like we're onto repeats only. I think I've waited long enough in the hope that they would crop up. (only one out of the several I really wanted after the first earth screensaver was given away nearly 2 years ago have actually been given away so it's time to open up that moth ridden wallet of mine, lol.

Hmm, looks nicer on the monitor than out my window...Installed on both Vista and XP with no problems. Astrogemini screensavers default to a compatible setting, so at first view the graphics could appear blocky. For best results with any decent graphics card circa 2000 on, set the video mode as high as possible and knock the gamma down a bit. And don't forget to uninstall the screensaver manager; at least they give you a choice about installing the toolbar.

It looks very nice indeed but unfortunately I'm not at home now so can't install it...

Just out of curiosity: how much RAM does it eat?

I really appreciate the stuff that I get here, I have to pass on the screen saver though, I live in the north and I'm tired of the winter scene. lol

Nice winter scene screensaver. Thank you!

Nothing special. The graphics looks like the very old PC games. I don't like this type of "easy" screensavers.

If you want a screensaver that stands above all others that I have seen, go to serenescreen.com
Download the demo of Aquarium v.2 and be truly amazed at the high standard of realistic graphics

love getting free screensavers. keep them coming

Another unchanged rerun, same as everything else. Curiously, this displays on my secondary monitor (16:10), doesn't blank the primary (4:3). The aspect ratio is correct, but it appears to think that it's using the primary's resolution, which is higher, so the excess may just be being clipped. I like this well enough, but I have to agree that 3Planesoft has improved its graphics greatly over time, whereas Astro Gemini's hasn't advanced (although the giveaways are always older code anyway). In most cases, I like Astro Gemini's music better (often, much better). With improvements in my security software, I'm finding more problems with Astro Gemini's code. Many people will see this as malicious, but it's just bad coding and generally harmless. Many of Astro Gemini's and 3Planesoft's screensavers are direct copies of each other's or third-party themes. For example, Astro Gemini's 3D Waterfall and 3Planesoft's Nature 3D were both clearly based on ATI's Nature demo (of course, ATI didn't write it, they paid a multimedia firm to develop it). I did buy 3Planesoft's collection, even though I had already purchased several of their screensavers. At less than three bucks per screensaver, it was worth it to me. Of course, anyone can download demos of Astro Gemini's and 3Planesoft's products, but there were several that I hadn't bothered with, thinking that they wouldn't be good. I was pleasantly surprised to find some really decent ones. After Astro Gemini's Windmill 3D, I wasn't keen on trying 3Planesoft's same-themed Dutch Windmills 3D, but it's astonishing. Of course, how much you enjoy screensavers depends upon your PC's graphics display abilities. With a high frame-rate at 1920x1200 on my 24" LCD, Dutch Windmills is amazing, even more so with higher levels of filtering. If you like seeing lots of people in your screensavers, the holiday-themed fantasy screensaver, Snow Village 3D, is amusing. Not only is it full of clones, but bobble-head clones at that (but none of them pay any attention to the fireworks displays). Lagoon 3D is astonishingly beautiful and realistic, but not a lot of variety. 3Planesoft loves to play with reflections and refractions. Christmas Bells 3D is beautiful. If you like fireplaces, Fireside Christmas 3D is very high-quality. The fantasy screensaver Lighthouse Point 3D looks even better with higher levels of filtering. Cuckoo Clock 3D and Clock Tower 3D were much better than I expected. I wish Astro Gemini would improve their screensaver options. All 3Planesoft screensavers allow you to select the monitor and aspect ratio (auto-detect generally works), and blank additional displays. Many allow you to use your own music. One even allows you to insert your own picture to be displayed in a picture frame.

With minus 18C in real life outside? No thnx.

This is quite a nice SS, it downloaded, installed and activated just fine. I do agree with #2, astro gemini could take some lessons from other SS creators. The only problem i have with screensavers as such is that in this day and age of modern monitors they are quite redundant. The only true way to 'save your screen' is to actually turn it off when not in use. Thanks GOTD :)

Ok its not Christmas And its been up 3 times already.

Pros.
Easy Instal Relaxing

Cons
Its not Chrismas, Big Size, and Its just plain bad and its been up 3 times!

It crashed my computer while downloading. I use xp and nothing had done this before. I was dissapointed as nearly all of the software given-away here is fantastic! Hope it is better tomorrow!

THere are NO CHRISTMAS THEMES in this one...

...just a wonderful 'Winter's Feel' right here -

**TWO THUMBS UP!