Black Boxes: Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition

Wake Up!
Plus! Digital Media Edition includes an alarm clock application that plays anything that Windows Media Player can handle. If you're like your author and let the computer in the bedroom run all night anyhow, you can immediately put this feature to good use. The program even has a snooze button (which allows the snooze interval to be adjusted) and can have multiple recurring programs, i.e. to allow one to sleep in on the weekends. It also means that you won't have to wake up to songs that you don't like that will make you cranky all day, songs that only get stuck in your head or annoying buzzer alarms. Then again, we've also gotten dead air before on some of the stations that we used to wake up to, so using Plus!' alarm clock puts that concern to rest.

Photo Story
Like many other DVD authoring packages we've seen for our sister publication, Videomaker, Plus! allows you to put together slideshows with the Photo Story application, complete with the Ken Burns effect. The resulting slideshows are saved as movies in Windows Media format (of course.)

Retro Man
If you've got a stash of records or tapes in the closet, Plus! gives you an excuse to exhume them and digitize them. Connecting a turntable requires the use of a phono preamp or sending your turntable's output through a stereo receiver. Connecting a tape recorder is simple and direct. You can record an entire album side at a time and cut the tracks apart later or let the software automatically split the tracks for you. Finally, you can excise tape hiss and clicks and pops on records with Pop and Hiss removal. We'd say this is something to try while you're lurking in the background so you can keep an ear out for skipping records or tapes being eaten by the deck. (It's been a while since you've thought about that, hasn't it?)

Time to Part-Tay
Now you can give your computer the task of being the disc jockey the next time you find yourself hosting a soiree. Just fire up Plus!' Party Mode and let your guests choose the music. You can prevent your CD drive from being accessed, as well as restrict access to certain playlists. There's also a security element offered by Party Mode, which locks the computer if a party crasher tries to install software or start another program. Full screen skins are also provided, and the host can also set crawling messages. Guests can also put their own messages on the crawl, if enabled by the host.

Dance, Dance, Dance
We found the most interesting part of Plus! Digital Media Edition to be the included dancers. They're small, but surprisingly detailed, and they also move fluidly. We popped in our copy of The Now Sound of Brazil, a great Brazilian remix sampler disc put out by Six Degrees Records. We let the software automatically choose the dancer based on genre, and it chose Wade, a dancer who follows the “popping/locking” style of dancing. We thought Amanda, who danced house, was a better fit for the music.

Just for fun, we tried a few other music styles, including tracks from Gonzalo Rubalcaba's Supernova, DJ Shadow's Endtroducing, Pink Floyd's Animals and 311's self-titled album. The program seemed momentarily confused at times but sometimes came up with some rather amusing interpretations of the songs, leading us to remind ourselves that this is just a machine that is only prone to viruses, not experimentation with interesting chemicals.

More dancers can be downloaded from Microsoft's web site, as well, if the provided ones lose their luster.

Double-Plus!
For the miserly sum of $20, Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition adds a total of ten new feature groups to Windows XP. Whether it's worth it is up to you, but we sure had fun with it.

System Requirements

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