Aris/Oxford Computer Group
Holiday Screen Savers
courtesy of The Beinlichs !

What's this page all about?

This is the story of a small piece of software history.   The screen savers on this page were originally developed by a British software consulting company called the Oxford Computer Group (OCG) .  The screen savers have always been a real source of enjoyment to my family and me, and are a special part of every holiday season.

As you will learn, they have become harder to find over the years, and no site seems to have a complete collection.  I want them to continue to be available to others, so I have created this archive.

First, some history

(Note: This is an abbreviated version of the history that may be found at Camel Services's archive.  That page has a good history of the companies, as well as some technical information about the screen savers.  I highly recommend reading it if this saga interests you.  If the above link should fail, I have archived their page here.)

When I discovered the screen savers in 1998, OCG was known as Aris, Inc.  OCG/Aris apparently developed them as an advertising vehicle to show off their software development skills.  The screen savers are of good quality, and were sophisticated for their time.  There are versions for the 1994 through 2000 holiday seasons, and some early versons were reissued in 2003 and 2004.

A few years ago, Aris was purchased by another company, and the once-prominent screensavers became progressively more difficult to find on their web site.  And then they were gone.

Every holiday season, I searched the Internet for the screensavers I didn't have, to no avail.  Finally, in late 2004, I discovered the Oxford Computer Group, who had an archive of these very special screen savers.  And I filled in a few of the missing pieces.  But in 2005, even their archive was gone.  (It has reappeared in 2006.)

Searching again in 2007, I found another archive, this one provided by Camel Services Ltd. in Britain.  Camel Services worked with OCG and Aris on some of the screen savers, and their archive page has a good collection of the screen savers along with the history I mentioned above.

However, even their archive is not complete.  And while I wish the folks at Camel Services all the success in the world, the reality is that companies and their managers do come and go, and along with them go web sites and archives of old "unimportant" stuff such as holiday screen savers, no matter how special.

So even though my archive isn't complete either, I felt that I should help to preserve these historic screen savers by creating my own archive.  So here it is.  I have copied the table from Camel's archive, updated it, and replaced the links to files on my own server, so that I can be sure the files won't disappear in the future.

Details and disclaimers

You are welcome to download and enjoy these special screen savers, as they seem to be in the public domain.  I am reproducing the disclaimer from Camel's site below:

Note that these savers are designed to run during December, and that (with the exception of the Grotto) they develop day by day during the month. Please be careful if you change your computer date (especially if you are a corporate user, in which case you may not be able to).

The savers may be downloaded, used and distributed (unchanged) freely.  Camel Services has [and I have] the savers here for "posterity" and take NO RESPONSIBILITY for consequences of their use. The contact details (in readme files and About boxes etc.) and similar details are out of date.

And now... the screen savers!

I last scanned these files for viruses on December 2, 2012 using Zone Alarm and MalwareBytes anti-virus scanners.   I recommend that you scan anything you download from the Internet before you install it.  And in case it's not obvious... these run only on Windows.  As time goes on, though, they do become a bit crankier.  I've run the Toy Shop and Village Life on Windows 7, although the Toy Shop can cause some minor inconveniences.  See the notes below.

Please read the release notes that accompany each screen saver; they contain important information.  If you have any problems with these files, you're pretty much on your own.  But you can contact me if you wish.

I hope you enjoy these screen savers as much as we have.  I hope you will find, as I have, that the hardest part is deciding which one to run!!  Mason's favorite is the Toy Shop, and my favorites are Village Life and the Victorian Room.

Happy Holidays!

Brian

Year	Title	Preview Image	Corporate Identity	Bits, Platforms, and Install method	Download (includes readme file)	Online Readme
1994	Advent House		Oxford Computer Group Ltd	16bit	Not available (see below for 2004 rebuild)
1995	Victorian Room		Oxford Computer Group Ltd	16 bit, but rereleased (with enhancements) as 32 bit in 1999	(see below for 2nd ed.)   .scr 4,905 KB .zip  890 KB No readme file Courtesy of UK's Peter Humphreys!
1996	Santa's Grotto		Oxford Computer Group Ltd	16 bit, self-extracting .exe file, no installer (see readme), tested for Windows 3, 95 and NT3.	Not available (see below for 2nd ed.)
1996	NSPCC Happy Kids	Preview not available	Oxford Computer Group Ltd and Microsoft UK	16 bit, self-extracting .exe file, no installer (see readme),  tested for Windows 3, 95 and NT3.	215KB
1997	Advent Castle		Oxford Computer Group Ltd in transition to "Aris UK"	32 bit, self-extracting .exe file, no installer (see readme), tested for Windows 95, NT3 and 4	1,235 KB
1998	Village Life		"Aris UK"	32 bit, with installer, tested for Windows 95 and 98 and NT4	2,955 KB
1999	Victorian Room (2nd Ed.)		ARIS	32 bit, with installer, tested for Windows 95 and 98 and NT4	2,360 KB
2000	Toy Shop		ARIS	Multimedia	6,449 KB SEE NOTES
2001 to 2002	None		Various	None Produced	-	-
2003	Kaleidoscope		Oxford Computer Group Ltd	32 bit for XP, 2000, 98 and 95.	2,606 KB
2004	Santa's Grotto (2nd Ed.)		Oxford Computer Group Ltd	32 bit for XP, 2000, 98 and 95.	1,285 KB
2004	Advent House (from 1994)		Oxford Computer Group Ltd	Rebuilt for XP, 2000, 98 and 95 without any updates	152 KB

Notes about running the Toy Shop under Windows 7

The other savers are not .exe files, so (to my knowledge) you can't use these tricks with them.

• You can make the screen saver run "full screen" by changing the "Compatibility" properties.  Locate "C:\Windows\ToyShop.exe" in the file explorer, right-click it, and choose "Properties", then the "Compatibility" tab.  Select the "Windows XP Service Pack 3" compatibility mode.  Enable "Run in 640 x 480 screen resolution" and click "OK".  See the example to the right.  It actually looks very nice in this mode. 
• You may notice that after the saver exits, all of the icons on your desktop have been rearranged to fit into a 640 x 480 area.  This stopped happening to me when I changed the saver to run in XP compatibilty mode, as described above.
• You may discover that after the saver exits, your taskbar is no longer visible.  The "Start" orb is visible, but not the taskbar.  This is kind of a pain. You can still switch between tasks using Alt-Tab, but it's a hassle. It seems to be related to the .scr file, because if you run the .exe directly, it doesn't happen.  You can see the taskbar disappear as soon as you double-click on the.scr file.  While researching this, I found this page and this page, which have several sugestions, especially in the comments sections.  What I have found is that it just seems to come back on its own after a while, which makes me wonder if some of the "solutions" just happen to coincide with when it decided to come back on its own.  If you have any ideas or solutions, please contact me.

Last updated: December 2, 2012.

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