The Counterpoint program launcher

The Counterpoint program launcher was supplied with the Amstrad PC5086 and other Amstrad PCs from that era. It acts as a user-friendly front end, replacing the full GUIs (Windows 2.0, or GEM) supplied with previous models.

The Amstrad-branded version opens with a warning that it should only be used on Amstrad computers. However it appears to run successfully in non-Amstrad environments, such as the virtual machine used to make these screenshots.

I love discovering user interfaces I've never known about this before, and this one fits the bill just right. Wild UI experimentation was the norm during the late '80s and early '90s, before we all settled on what we're all using now. Digging into the past and learning from even relatively obscure footnotes such as these is fascinating.