>>>>  Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 (Beta) <<<<
                Tweaking Your Windows 95 Interface

   Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 is a good add-on pack to buy, whether 
your are into changing your working environment or need/want a little 
help in keeping things up to date in your computer. The Plus! Pack lets 
you customize your Windows environment as never before. Instead of just 
changing your wallpaper, you can go for the theme approach: with sounds, 
cursors and icons that match the background image.

   The aesthetics first: there are some really neat setups in the pack. 
From an "Inside Your Computer," which looks remarkably like one of those 
Intel TV ads, to the "60's," with a revolving peace sign, and a whole 
bunch of things in between, these scenarios are fun to look at, 
manipulate and put into effect. There is at least one, and possibly two 
or three, for just about any taste.

   But what is even better is that you can take the elements of these 
scenarios and mix and match them to your heart's content. If you like an 
animated cursor from one area, the Windows flag waving in the 
cyberbreeze to replace your hourglass and a recycle bin that grows 
flowers when something is waiting to be dumped, you can do all of that. 
Each cursor is customizable in Win95 itself, and the base program offers 
a lot of options, but those options become more colorful and fun with 
the Plus! pack.

   The Plus! pack even adds some very nifty screen savers. I 
particularly like one that makes a sort of "bubble" that travels around 
the screen. That gives some interesting effects when you have 
photographs as your wallpaper. Too, an option that keeps the contents of 
the window visible as you move and size it is, at best, nifty. I don't 
know why, but it seems this single option makes the whole program seem 
more "together."

   There is also an option to smooth the edges of fonts. It seems to 
work fairly well, but played havoc with PageMaker 5.0, which I happen to 
run without actual fonts visible whenever possible. This option turned 
the fonts gray and made it difficult to see them at small (2 to 4 point) 
sizes. Since I use PageMaker quite often, I turned this option off in 
the Plus! pack.

   If all of that were all there was to the Plus Pack, it would be quite 
an offering at the price. Actually, there is a lot more as well, but the 
remainder of the features are more "housekeeping" chores than pretty 
stuff.

   We all defragment our disks a couple of times a week, don't we? Well, 
I know I should. But I don't. Now I do. Plus! pack includes a neat 
scheduling function that allows for defragmenting in the background and 
will do it at specific times of the day. Since there are various options 
for this (and other) functions, you can set a full defrag for once a 
week and a simple compact on a daily basis. By the way, if your computer 
is turned off when this is supposed to happen, the Plus! pack's 
scheduler nags you later on.

   The package also includes options to scan the disk for errors on a 
scheduled basis and will also check for low disk space. The latter 
proved to be a lifesaver for me (I have it check hourly, I don't even 
know it is doing it) after I went on a major search and destroy mission 
to clean out the disk and forgot to empty the recycle bin. I was fooling 
around with some very large graphic files, and this warning came at a 
very good time.

   Finally, the Plus! pack shows what 32-bit programs can do. With all 
sorts of software houses rushing to get 32-bit Win95 packages out the 
door, this is one view of the future as we will soon know it. We've seen 
several 32-bit beta copies of software here at PCM, and I can tell you 
that you will be amazed at some of the things some of this stuff does.

{Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95: Microsoft, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, 
WA 98052-6399, (800) 426-9400 or (206) 882-8080. REQUIRES: Windows 95.}

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