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Microsoft Plus! for Windows XP

Whenever Microsoft develops a new consumer OS, the company also releases a Plus! pack to provide some extras. Sometimes users criticize the industry giant as marketing something that should have been included in the OS itself. We can't say otherwise now, since a couple of the elements of Microsoft Plus! for Windows XP should have been in the OS. And frankly, we could do without some other features in this $40 add-on.

Sure, some PC users will pay for desktop themes and screensavers. Also, the three 3-D games Hyperbowl, The Labyrinth, and Russian Square (all Plus! Editions) are miles ahead of what used to be tossed in as extras. That is, as long as you have a desktop or one of those still-rare laptops with 16MBof video memory and 3-D graphics. Plus!'s visual features have some stiff system requirements.

For all those who aren't shopping for a few graphical goodies, there's the promise of digital media enhancement in Plus! And this is where we were most disappointed.

Plus! Voice Command for Windows Media Player layers a voice-control interface on top of Windows XP's native music- and video-playing utility. Voice Command works well enough with the included microphone but suffers from awkwardness, like shouting voice commands when the music is cranking.

At a glance, the Plus! MP3 Audio Converter seems to have more promise, converting files to the more compact WMA format. But as testing proved, an encoded file that's reencoded sounds distorted. A reasonably sensitive ear will detect phasing and other artifacts of the reencoding process. Plus! Personal DJ, 3-D Visualizations, and Skins all fall under the "should have been free" category.

The other two features worth mentioning are Plus! Speaker Enhancement and CD Label Maker. The former just doesn't work well. We tested with two sets of speakers that the program recognizes and can "correct for" through equalization. The sound in both cases was distorted and had too much bass for any musical style. Even a few seconds spent playing with Media Player's equalization yielded better results than Speaker Enhancement did. Conversely, CD Label Maker was great, providing what was missing from Windows XP's bare-bones CD-burning capability.

Those buying Plus! just for media enhancements should look elsewhere, though theme and game hunters will be satisfied with it.