Wallpapers used to refer to the kinds of papers you would have to glue to the walls of your home. You may remember dad with rolls upon rolls of the paper, buckets of an undisclosed sticky substance, and a variety of rollers and rulers to create the illusion of continuity. While painting walls has largely superseded the use of wallpapers, today this term actually refers to the kind of backdrop on your personal computer! In the past you were only able to display your icons against the factory preloaded backdrop, which at times was somewhat drab. Since the individuality of employees has been found to be a most valuable asset to any company, it is not surprising that solutions for individuality even of the workspace have been sought.

Over time additional software packages became available and PC wallpaper suddenly became colorful, fun filled, and most importantly – easy to use. No longer bound by a generic blue background, you were suddenly able to celebrate the season with free Christmas wallpaper – whether you liked reindeer, Santa, candy canes, and anything in between. Suddenly there were Easter, Saint Patrick’s Day, and Halloween wallpapers which were downloadable. Granted, some images had to be paid for, but by and large the wallpapers were free and Christmas wallpaper led the bunch in terms of popularity! With the surging popularity came bigger and better software packages, and today you quite frequently will be able to download moving images, some of which are so realistic that it is hard to discern if you are looking at a generated image of an actually movie.

Of course, these kinds of wallpapers are no longer just available for your computer. Wallpaper is now available for any number of contraptions, from cell phones to Blackberries, and even your very own PSP! Wallpapers to the latter may be downloaded as “free wallpaper downloads” from any number of websites and as such there are copious instructions on how to download and install the free desktop wallpaper. Naturally, whenever you decide to download anything from the Internet you will need to ensure that it is from a save website so that you can be reasonably certain that you are not downloading a virus or Trojan and then get more than you bargained for. Once you do find a reputable site, however, you will be in for a treat since you are now able to periodically change the look and feel of your appliances and thus your work environment – a little change is a good thing!