"It's an indie game where the player-explorer observes a dead world and has to write down what he observes in a journal and send it back to his home world.
The music is still controlled through the computer's music software, like iTunes or Windows Media Player, but Explorer reroutes the music around the computer's sound card and through its own audio circuitry.
Not that exploitation is all Microsoft has in mind, but naive users are the ones most likely to stick with the defaults, using Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer, and the many services Microsoft offers as easy defaults to loyal Windows users (Bing, Live, and so on).
It comes loaded with Microsoft's Pocket Outlook (e-mail, calendar, contact, notes, tasks), Word, Excel, the Microsoft e-book Reader, Windows Media Player 8, Internet Explorer and other staples, all of which make transferring files uncommonly easy (that is, if you're not a Mac or Linux person).
Some of its more integral features, like the new versions of Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer, are available for free on Microsoft's Web site.
Standard applications include WordPad, Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer 6.0, but curiously not the versions of Word and Excel that appear on PDAs running Windows Mobile.
Using Google's new Player Time Series Explorer, developers can get a better idea of what their players are doing during critical moments in a game.
You can plug them directly into a free USB port on your PC, wait for Windows to recognize the disk, and you should be able to find your music on your player through Windows Explorer.
And Leapster Explorer players can access even more learning fun online in LeapWorldTM, for a total mobile learning experience that offers kids new discoveries every time they play.
You play characters – a diver who can swim, a pilot who will eventually get you all off the island, a navigator who can move other players, and an explorer who can move diagonally.
But Mr. Glaser and several industry analysts said that for technical and other reasons Microsoft was unlikely to achieve the dominance with its Media Player that its Internet Explorer program gained over Netscape's rival Navigator browser.
