Microsoft Plus!
Microsoft Plus! is a discontinued commercial operating system enhancement product by Microsoft. The last edition is the Plus! SuperPack, which includes an assortment of screensavers, themes, and games, as well as multimedia applications. The Microsoft Plus! product was first announced on January 31, 1994, under the internal codename "Frosting". The first edition was an enhancement for Windows 95, Windows 95 Plus!
The enhancements that make up Microsoft Plus! were generally developed by Microsoft itself. The Plus! packs also included games and content from third-party companies; for example, in Plus! for Windows XP, the HyperBowl game developed by HyperEntertainment Inc. was included. Plus! features that enhance the base operating system or provide utility are generally included free of charge in the next release of Windows.
Microsoft Plus! was discontinued and replaced by Windows Ultimate Extras in Windows Vista.
Windows Ultimate Extras would later be completely removed in Windows 7.
Versions
Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95
This was the first version of Plus! and had an initial cost of US$49.99. It included Space Cadet Pinball, the Internet Jumpstart Kit, DriveSpace 3 and Compression Agent disk compression utilities, the initial release of theme support along with a set of 12 themes, dial-up networking server, dial-up scripting tool, and the graphical improvements such as anti-aliased screen fonts, full-window drag, the ability to stretch or shrink the wallpaper to fit the screen and high color icons.Task Scheduler as it is present in later Windows versions was included as System Agent. A utility to notify the user of low disk space also ran as part of System Agent. Plus! for Windows 95 was initially marketed for adding features for "high-performance computers", the minimum system requirements were an 80386 CPU with 8 megabytes of RAM. Later releases of Windows 95 included DriveSpace 3 and Internet Explorer 3.0. Windows 98 included all of the enhancements included in Plus! for Windows 95. Space Cadet Pinball was not installed by default, but included on the Windows 98 CD. Although Windows NT 4.0 is not intended to support desktop themes, each desktop theme from this pack along with the Space theme from the Microsoft Plus! for Kids pack and three additional exclusive desktop themes is installable on this operating system via the Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit.
The screen-saver and wallpaper files include images from the Codex Leicester, which Microsoft co-founder, then CEO Bill Gates bought in 1994.
Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 shipped with the following Desktop Themes:
- Dangerous Creatures
- Inside Your Computer
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Mystery
- Nature
- Science
- The 60's USA
- The Golden Era
- Sports
- Travel
- Windows 95
- More Windows
Microsoft Plus! for Kids
This version was released in 1997 and aimed at children of ages 3 to 12. It includes three new applications: Talk It!, a text-to-speech program that says what users type using various voices; Play It!, an electronic keyboard with music and sound effects; and Paint It!, a version of Paint oriented for kids. It also contained a "picture picker" along with clipart, fonts, 10 new desktop themes, and Protect It!, a parental controls program. Plus! for Kids was the only Plus! release from the Microsoft Home and Entertainment division rather than the Windows Operating System development group. Four desktop themes from this collection - Baseball, Jungle, Space and Underwater – were included in Windows 98 and Windows Me; the Underwater theme, however, was modified to have its sounds play in different events.There is also a demo version for Microsoft Plus! for Kids; however, it only contains the readme for the program and the Underwater theme. The pack can also be installed on Windows NT 4.0 if the user is granted administrative privileges, according to the Readme document included with the pack, although Protect It! and the desktop themes cannot be installed, mainly due to design differences between Windows 95 and NT 4.0.
| Theme Name | Notes |
| Baseball | Later included in Windows 98/Me |
| Bugs | - |
| Horses | - |
| Jungle | Later included in Windows 98/Me |
| Messy Room | - |
| RE-man | - |
| Snowboarding | - |
| Space | Later included in Windows 98/Me |
| Treehouse | - |
| Underwater | Later included in Windows 98/Me |
Microsoft Plus! 98
As the sequel to the original suite of enhancements to Windows, Plus! 98 included eighteen new desktop themes, along with new programs and tools for Windows 98. An "organic art" 3D screensaver rendered unique infinite 3D visual shapes. A Start Menu cleanup utility was added to Windows 98's Maintenance Wizard. A Cybermedia Non-Critical File Cleaner utility was integrated into Disk Cleanup. ZIP file integration with Windows Explorer was first introduced with this version under the name of "compressed folders". New games, such as Microsoft Golf 1998 Lite, Lose Your Marbles and the now popular Spider Solitaire were also part of Plus! 98. A Deluxe CD Player with CDDB support and a basic "express" version of Picture It! were also included. Finally, Plus! 98 came with McAfee VirusScan 3.0, along with a six-month supply of free updates.Some Plus! 98 features such as compressed folders and the Spider Solitaire game were included in Windows Me and later Windows versions. The Deluxe CD Player was included with Windows 2000. Although Windows Me does not include all of the Plus! 98 features and Plus! 98 Setup is blocked by Windows Me as incompatible, it can be installed on Windows Me by copying the setup files to the local hard disk and renaming Setup.exe before running it.
| Theme Name | Notes |
| Baseball | Previously included in Plus! for Kids |
| Dangerous Creatures | Previously included in Plus! for Windows 95 |
| Inside Your Computer | Previously included in Plus! for Windows 95 |
| Jungle | Previously included in Plus! for Kids |
| Leonardo da Vinci | Previously included in Plus! for Windows 95 |
| Mystery | Previously included in Plus! for Windows 95 |
| Nature | Previously included in Plus! for Windows 95 |
| Science | Previously included in Plus! for Windows 95 |
| Space | Previously included in Plus! for Kids |
| The 60's USA | Previously included in Plus! for Windows 95 |
| The Golden Era | Previously included in Plus! for Windows 95 |
| Sports | Previously included in Plus! for Windows 95 |
| Travel | Previously included in Plus! for Windows 95 |
| Underwater | Previously included in Plus! for Kids |
| Windows 98 | Windows 98 only; previously included in Plus! for Windows 95 under the name "Windows 95" |
| More Windows | Windows 98 only; previously included in Plus! for Windows 95, albeit with Windows 95's version of The Microsoft Sound and the background reading "Windows 95" |
| Windows Millennium | Windows Me only; rebranded version of the "More Windows" theme with updated Windows Me-specific wallpaper and The Microsoft Sound |
| Theme Name |
| Architecture |
| Cathy |
| Cityscape |
| Corbis Photography |
| Doonesbury |
| Falling Leaves |
| Farm |
| Fashion |
| FoxTrot |
| Garfield |
| Geometry |
| Horror Channel |
| Jazz |
| Peanuts |
| PhotoDisc |
| Rock-n-Roll |
| Science Fiction |
| Windows 98 |
| World Traveler |
It is possible to use the Plus! for Windows 95, Plus! for Kids, and Plus! 98 desktop themes on Windows 2000 and Windows XP, by copying
PLUS!.DLL, THEMES.EXE, and Themes folder from the %ProgramFiles%\Plus! directory from an existing Windows 98/Me computer to a Windows 2000/XP computer. It is recommended to run the Desktop Themes control panel in Windows 98/Me compatibility mode, to avoid crashes.The screensaver
.scr/.dll files are stored in %WINDIR%\system on Windows 98/Me, and can be copied over to %WINDIR%\system32 directory on Windows 2000/XP.Microsoft Plus! Game Pack: Cards & Puzzles
This Plus! pack was released at the time of Windows Millennium Edition; however, it could also be installed on Windows 95-98, NT 4.0 and 2000. It included the Microsoft Entertainment Pack: The Puzzle Collection - a collection of 10 arcade games and Microsoft Bicycle Card Collection, another set of 12 card games. A trial version of Microsoft Pandora's Box was also included.Microsoft Plus! for Windows XP
Marketed as "The Ultimate Companion for Windows XP", Microsoft Plus! for Windows XP was launched alongside the Windows XP operating system on October 25, 2001. This version of Plus! was created to show off the enhanced capabilities that Windows XP presented with its updated Windows Media Player and DirectX 3D core technologies. Continuing the feature categories of the previous Plus! products, the product features were desktop themes, screen savers, games, and utilities.Plus! for Windows XP includes:
- Plus! Themes
- Plus! Screen Savers
- Plus! Voice Command for Windows Media Player
- Plus! Personal DJ
- Plus! MP3 Converter
- Plus! CD Label Maker
- Plus! Speaker Enhancement
- Plus! 3D Visualizations for Windows Media Player
- Plus! Skins for Windows Media Player
- Plus! Hyperbowl
- Plus! Russian Square
- Plus! Labyrinth