Wise men say that a bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work. With Marine Aquarium (a virtual?fish-tank screen saver) you get both. The fishing is vegan-style: Just admire your colorful aquatic buddies as they cavort against a realistic backdrop of coral and sand. And, yes, you can work while watching Marine Aquarium--just select its window mode. We, however, prefer screen-saver mode, which turns your whole screen into a gorgeous fish tank, complete with rising bubbles.

Version 2.0 adds five new fish, bringing the ichthyological total to 26--we're especially fond of the Blue Tang and Lionfish. The bad news is that you can only have seven fish in the tank (on the screen) simultaneously. If you own a widescreen display (such as an Apple Cinema Display), you can have eight. However, they can be all of one breed or mixed--even randomized. Nifty touches include dynamic lighting, which consolidates a day's day and night lighting into a 30-minute cycle that you can shorten to as little as 3 minutes. This light cycling was enjoyable for a while, but we're glad the program also offered manual light settings we could set once and enjoy in perpetuity. You can adjust basic settings via System Preferences' Screen Effects pane or the application preferences dialog when Aquarium is running in window mode.

We know nobody really needs a screen saver: Modern computer displays are virtually immune to the dreaded monitor burn-in of old. No, we don't need it, but we'd buy Marine Aquarium just because we think it's cool--and because it drives our cat crazy.

—Niko Coucouvanis - August 2003