Puppy Basket & Kitten Clouds

This piece certainly sits on the more 'playful nostalgia' side of the shop. I tried searching for an original source and was brought to, of all things, a website to install desktop themes on your pc.  

Desktop themes were an easy way to dress up your Windows experience, especially from Windows 98 onwards. More than just a wallpaper, themes would often include an accompanying screen saver, some audio stingers to replace the sounds normal functions make, amongst other installable items. Themes were free a way to completely re-dress your desktop environment. 

The website I was able to find this image on is quite dated. Themes quickly became popular with an older crowd of home pc users and this website reflects that in the choices available amongst it's music (from Beatles to Bach) film (The Godfather, Back to the Future) and comedy (Abbot and Costello, Mr Bean) categories. You can find this particular theme under the Animals category, titled 'Best Buddies'. It includes the following poem...

The best of friends can change a frown
Into a smile when you feel down.
The best of friends, worth more than gold,
Give all the love a heart can hold.

The theme also includes, in the .zip file I was able to download, customized icons, a special font, custom .wav files for basic operations and a matching Winamp Skin.

Unfortunately the sound played when you empty the Recycle Bin isn't a cat doing that weird heaving thing but rather, a short classical guitar lick.

The Start Up noise has now been replaced with yet again, more classical guitar.

You know that sound that's embedded into your head when an error or prompt hits. It's like an audible asterisk. The classic 'Exclamation' sound varied over the years from Uh-Oh's to very short chord piano stabs to almost a kalimba sounding hit. Regardless of the instrument the sample was played on, the exclamation sound effect was always fast on the attack and short on the decay. No release. It was a strike and it was brief.

The 'Exclamation' sound effect in this Windows theme is just another passage of classical, nylon stringed guitar. How disappointing. 

I turn most of my system sounds off anyways, so that doesn't really factor into to my life, but in the end I was at least able to find out a starting point or source for where someone at some point printed this desktop wallpaper out and framed it (in a nice wood frame).