$40 Plus Pack Adds Even More Goodies to Windows XP Desktop Themes, Games, and Windows Media Player Extras Enhance New OS Eric Grevstad
Mon 10/1/01 -- Remember Microsoft Plus, the add-on pack of desktop themes, screen savers, and other fun stuff for Windows 95? Microsoft Corp. has updated the idea with DirectX 8 and the other new media technologies of Windows XP, and Microsoft Plus for Windows XP will be available for $40 when the new operating system reaches retail shelves on October 25.
New desktop themes -- Nature, Aquarium, Space, and da Vinci -- transform a Windows XP system with unified wallpapers, icons, sounds, mouse pointers, Windows Media Player skins, screen savers, and more, while a set of 3D screen savers ranges from a realistic aquarium to a series of creative displays for your digital photos.
If Windows XP's Pinball and Spider Solitaire don't satisfy your appetite for games, there's a Russian Square puzzle game, a 3D tabletop labyrinth with 40 challenging levels, and Hyperbowl Plus, which lets you go bowling in a classic alley, or a very classic alley (the streets of ancient Rome).
Perhaps the biggest extras in Plus for XP apply to Windows Media Player. In addition to 3-D visualizations with animated dancing characters and a CD Label Maker for creating colorful, customized covers with artist, track, and album info, there's Speaker Enhancement, which uses digital signal processing technology to boost the clarity and richness of many common desktop PC speakers; MP3 Audio Converter, which changes MP3 files to the high-fidelity, half-the-disk-space Windows Media Audio format; and Voice Command, which lets Media Player respond to over 35 spoken commands to start or stop playback, switch to the next track on a CD, and more.
