Dinosaur Sighting: Microsoft Plus! Companion for Windows 95

The Microsoft Plus! Companion for Windows 95 CD cover was actually a cardboard envelope CD case.

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The Microsoft Plus! Companion for Windows 95 CD. (There was also a floppy disk version of Plus! that came on 6 high density floppies.)

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Included in the box was a 25-page user guide, which oddly had a black and white cover.

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Once you put the CD in the drive, the splash screen appeared and was accompanied by the “Microsoft Sound,” which was the original Windows 95 Startup sound.

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If you selected the Custom Setup, you saw the Options list and could select the items that you wanted to install.

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By default Windows 95 came with the DriveSpace Compression software, which was a great utility when you were dealing with small hard disk (540 MB was typical in 1995), because it was designed to increase the amount of data you could store by compressing and decompressing data on-the-fly. DriveSpace 3 was essentially an upgrade that provided better disk compression and support for compressed drives of up to 2 GB. This was a big jump as the size of a compressed drive previously maxed out at 512 MB.

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The hard disk Properties dialog box had a Compression tab that had graphic images that showed the benefits of compressing your hard disk.

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The Compression Agent was a tool that was designed to compact individual files even more tightly to save space. The Compression Agent was run on a regular basis by the System Agent or whenever the system was idle for a period of time.

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The System Agent, which was essentially the precursor to Task Scheduler, allowed you to run programs at a specific time or when the system was idle.

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The Dial-Up Networking Server allowed the modem attached to your Windows 95 system to answer incoming calls and allow you to access your system remotely. Think a dial-up version of GoToMyPC.

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The Internet Jumpstart Kit provided the Internet Setup Wizard to walk you through all the steps need to connect to the Internet. However, the main feature was of course Microsoft Internet Explorer 1.0.

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3D Pinball featuring the Space Cadet table was created by Maxis Software and licensed to Microsoft for inclusion in Plus! Maxis later released the Full Tilt! Pinball game package, which included the Space Cadet table as well as two other tables named Dragon's Keep and Skulduggery.

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The Visual Enhancements feature of Microsoft Plus! included a number of settings found on the Plus! tab of the Display Properties. You could change to large size icons, make fonts appear smoother, or stretch the wallpaper to better fit the screen, just to name a few.

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One of most popular features in Microsoft Plus were the Desktop Themes, which provided a number of topical themes. Each one had different color schemes, sounds, screen savers, wallpaper images, icons, fonts, animated cursors, and more. The Desktop Themes app, found in the Control Panel, made it easy to select, preview and customize the various themes.

You’ll also notice that there is a Save As button at the top of the Desktop Themes app, which meant that you could pick and choose your favorite elements and create your own desktop theme.

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When you selected a theme, such as Dangerous Creatures, you could see the color scheme, wallpaper, and desktop icons in the preview area. You could click the Screen Saver button to see a preview and you could click the Pointer, Sounds etc button to preview the sounds and animated pointers. When you clicked OK, the theme would be applied to the desktop.

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The Dangerous Creatures theme featured a dark color scheme, appropriate desktop icons, such as a tarantula and a puffer fish, and wallpaper showing a mountain lion.

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The Dangerous Creatures screen saver had sharks and stingrays swimming around while bubbles floated to the surface. These were accompanied by a pleasant bubble sound effect.

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The Inside your Computer theme was next up in the list and featured a great tech sound scheme as well as great graphics.

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The wallpaper displayed a box-like unit of circuit boards full of vacuum tubes, resistors, diodes, and chips.

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The screen saver consisted of chips, diodes, and resistors all floating across the screen accompanied by random electronic sounds.

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One of the most interesting themes in the Plus! 95 package was the Leonardo da Vinci theme.

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The Leonardo da Vinci wallpaper includes the inventor’s famous Vitruvian Man.

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The screen saver consisted of floating images displaying some of the inventors’ famous contraptions, such as wings that were intended to allow a man to fly.

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The More Windows theme was one of my favorites because of the wallpaper, which was a magnification of the center of the Windows flag.

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If you look closely, you can see that wallpaper in the My Computer icon and one of the computers in the Network Neighborhood icon was the same as on the desktop.

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The screen saver displayed blocks that flew in from all sides and eventually filled the screen. This screen saver offered configuration settings that allowed you to choose the size blocks, set the speed at which the blocks flew onto the screen, as well as choose whether to use the wallpaper for the pattern on the blocks. If you didn’t opt to use the wallpaper, the pattern on the blocks was derived from whatever was on your screen at the time the screen saver kicked in.

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The Mystery theme pulled together all of the things that you would associate with a good mystery movie.

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The wallpaper showed a majestic study illuminated by candle light. Notice the My Computer icon is a Sherlock Holmes hat.

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The screen saver showed a haunted house and featured creaking door sounds, an occasional pipe organ, and fluttering bats.

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To please Audubon society members, there was the Nature theme.

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The wallpaper was a collage of typical ground cover while the main desktop icons showed a nest, a butterfly, and a camp fire.

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For this screen saver, furry caterpillars silently scurried across leaves on the screen.

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Of all the themes, Science was my most favorite because it had an awesome screen saver and great sounds.

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The wallpaper showed a meteorite pocked planet partially illuminated by its sun.

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The neat thing about the Science screen saver was it was one that actually had settings. The main element was a configurable lens that floated back and forth across the screen. For instance you could changes the size and speed of the lens, and there were six different lens types. This image shows the Inside Out lens.

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For the athletic Windows 95 users, there was a Sports theme, which featured sounds from basket ball, ping pong, baseball, and auto racing just to name a few.

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The wallpaper featured a colorful artistic picture of a wind surfer riding the waves.

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The screen saver showed a chalkboard on which football plays were drawn; complete with the sound of chalk striking the board.

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For the old hippies, there was the 60’s theme which was striking with its tie-dye wallpaper.

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The main desktop icons showed a peace sign, beads, flowers. The sounds consisted of guitar riffs, sitar, and bongo sounds. The Start windows sound for this theme featured the end of the countdown from an Apollo rocket launch: 3-2-1.

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The screen saver was the same one from the science theme. This image shows the Spiral lens.

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The Golden Era theme was right out of the early 1900’s.

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The wallpaper showed an artistic view of old time tractors.

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The screen saver was a classic, featuring a man reading a paper and listening to an old time radio. Radio announcers and old phones would float around the screen accompanied by sounds of ringing phones, operators talking, and bits from old radio shows.

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The Travel theme was from the mid 1900’s. Notice that the My Computer icon is an old box camera. The sounds featured a variety of old car horns honking and trains rushing down the tracks.

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The wallpaper for Travel theme was a sepia-toned photo of an old train station.

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The screen saver consisted of sea planes flying through clouds on the screen. I always thought that this was the worst screen saver of the bunch especially when imagining what they could have done and comparing it to the Golden Era screen saver.

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The Windows 95 theme was another of my favorite themes, it had great sounds and the animated cursors featured the Windows flag fluttering in the wind.

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This iconic wallpaper, a Windows flag floating across clouds, like on the box, became a standard on just about everyone’s Windows 95 system regardless of whether they had Plus! installed.

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The Windows 95 theme screen saver was identical to the More Windows theme.

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What is MS Plus! for Windows 95? – Microsoft TechNet Archive

Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 – CNET Archive

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