PartitionMagic (1995) 20 Utility DOS Windows

A tool from PowerQuest, and later Symantec, that enables manipulation of partitions through its own bootable media. PartitionMagic can shrink, grow, or move partitions without the need to backup and restore files in that partition. It supported a variety of file systems, and the core DOS-based parition tool fit on a bootable 1.44mb floppy disk. It was extremely popular, and made installing or removing multiple OSes much easier.

• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x

Lindows (2002) 19 Linux

Lindows, later Linspire, was an attempt similar to Corel Linux to put desktop Linux in the hands of the consumer. With a customized KDE 3.x desktop, custom applications borderline cloning the Apple iLife suite, and a primitive "app store," it was intended to be easy to use and fully functional out of the box.

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.0.x
• 4.5.x
• 5.x

PC Paintbrush (1984) 19 Graphics DOS

ZSoft PC Paintbrush is a bitmap drawing program visually similar to MacPaint. The earlier DOS versions were often bundled with Microsoft and Microsoft compatible mice, and were notable for supporting a huge variety of video adapters. It competed against Mouse Systems PC Paint (not related despite the similar name). ZSoft PC Paintbrush eventually became Microsoft Paintbrush included in Windows 3.x. For Microsoft's rebranded version see Microsoft Mouse and Microsoft Paintbrush

• 2.x (DOS)
• 3.x (DOS)
• Plus 1.x (DOS)
• IV (DOS)

Harvard Graphics (1986) 18 Graphics DOS

Harvard Graphics, from Software Publishing Corporation and initially called Harvard Presentation Graphics, is a graphing/plotting/presentation creation application for DOS. It was extremely popular in the late 1980s. At release, it competed against many graphing products such as PFS:Graph (AKA IBM Graphing Assistant ), Microsoft Chart, ChartMaster, and Cricket Graph, just to name a small few. A Windows port was released in 1991, but it lost out to Microsoft Powerpoint.

• A.00
• A.01
• 2.x
• 3.x

Norton Desktop (1991) 18 Utility DOS

Norton Desktop is a powerful desktop shell and file manager bundled with many additional tools. There are versions for both DOS and Microsoft Windows.

• 1.0 for DOS

Paradox (1985) 18 DOS

Originally released in 1985 by Ansa Software and later sold to Borland, Paradox is a high-speed relational database product that integrates with Borland's "Turbo" products. It was notable for its Query By Example feature, and its Paradox Application Language. It was popular in the late 80s and early 90s, and competed against database product such as dBase, Symantec Q&A, Foxpro, Clipper, Clarion, DataEase, R:Base, and DataFlex.

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x
• Engine 2.0
• 1.0 (Win)
• 4.5

PKZip (1990) 18 Utility DOS

Pkzip is the most common archiver for MS-DOS based systems. It implements a an open compression method and is much faster than other archivers of its time.

• 1.x
• 2.0x

pcANYWHERE (1990) 18 Communications DOS Windows

pcAnywhere is a tool that enables one to remotely control another computer, or to be remotely controlled.

• 2.x (DOS)
• 4.0 (DOS)
• 4.5 (DOS)
• 5.0 (DOS)
• 2.0 (Win)
• 8.0 (Win)

StarOffice (1995) 18 Word Processor Windows Unix Linux

StarOffice, initially from Star Division GmbH is an office suite containing a word processor, spreadsheet, drawing program, and graphing program. It was later owned by Sun Microsystems and then Oracle, and spawned the open source OpenOffice and LibreOffice. Also see the earlier StarWriter

• 6.0

Volkswriter (1982) 18 Word Processor DOS

Volkswriter, from Lifetree Software Inc, was an early easy to use word processor for the IBM PC. Development of Volkswriter was inspired by the horridness of EasyWriter, and for a brief time it was possibly the only usable word processor for the IBM PC before an IBM version of WordStar was released. The "Deluxe" version will work with larger documents and has more features.

• 1.2
• Deluxe 2.x
• 3.0
• 4.0

3D Studio (1992) 17 Graphics DOS

3D Studio, not to be confused with the later "3d Studio Max" product, is a DOS-based tool from Autodesk for creating 3d models and animations.

• 2.0
• 3.0
• 4.x

MS CD Extensions (MSCDEX) (1997) 17 DOS

MSCDEX is the real-mode MS-DOS file system redirector used in conjunction with your CD-ROM driver for accessing CD drives. The CD-ROM driver, which is provided by your CD-ROM drive manufacturer, provides the hardware and protocol specific software interface to your drive. MSCDEX interfaces with this driver to present the raw CD-ROM data as a file system accessible as a DOS drive letter.

• 1.25

XTree (1985) 17 Utility DOS

XTree is an easy to use text-mode file manager. It pioneered the use of a GUI-like hierarchy tree, and provides many integrated file viewers. It competed against many other file managers including Gazelle Q-DOS and Norton Commander

• 1.x
• 2.x
• Pro 1.x
• Pro Gold 1.x
• Gold 2.x
• Easy
• Gold 3.x

PowerBASIC (1991) 17 DOS

PowerBASIC is a continuation of Borland TurboBasic maintained by its original author, Robert S. Zale. It was originally notable as a BASIC compiler, when most BASIC environments were interpreted.

• 2.x
• 3.x

Ventura Publisher (1986) 17 Publishing DOS

Ventura Publisher, originally from Xerox, is a professional desktop publishing program for the GEM graphical environment and later Windows. It has the distinction of being the first popular publishing program for the IBM PC platform. It competed with Aldus PageMaker, which initially was more popular on the Mac platform. There are also versions for Mac and OS/2.

• 1.0
• 1.1
• 2.0
• 3.0 for DOS-GEM

Logitech Mouseware (1987) 17 DOS Windows

Logitech mice and pointing devices were popular competition to Microsoft or Microsoft clone mice. Logitech mice often had extra features that required Logitech drivers, and early Logitech mice were not Microsoft or Mouse Systems protocol compatible.

• 3.x
• 4.0
• 6.x
• 7.x
• 8.x

Quicken (1989) 16 Financial DOS Windows

Quicken, from Intuit, is a financial management tool for home users. It was first released in 1984 for DOS and later ported to Apple II, Macintosh, and Windows. Intuit also provided a more powerful product, QuickBooks, for small businesses.

• 3.x (DOS)
• 4.x (DOS)
• 5.x (DOS)
• 6.0 (DOS)
• 7.x (DOS)
• 3.x (Win)
• 8.x (DOS)

QBasic (1991) 16 DOS

Microsoft QBasic, not to be confused with QuickBasic, is a stripped down version of the Microsoft QuickBasic product that replaces GW-Basic in MS-DOS 5.0 and later. QBasic is an interpreter only, and can not compile standalone executables. QuickBasic sources can be compiled into binary EXE files with QuickBasic or Visual Basic for DOS.

• 1.x

Adaptec EZ-SCSI (1992) 16 DOS Windows

EZ-SCSI, from Adaptec, is a convenient all-in-one set of drivers for Adaptec SCSI cards.

• 1.x
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.x

Sidekick (1984) 15 Utility PIM DOS

Borland Sidekick is a DOS based PIM (Personal Information Manager) and one of the first widely-used TSR (terminate and stay resident) programs. The key feature of Sidekick was that one could use Sidekick's utilities while using most other MS-DOS applications. This was important because MS-DOS had no built-in multi-tasking or task switching capabilities.

• 1.x
• Plus
• 2.0

Brief (1988) 15 Editor DOS

Brief is a text editor primarily aimed at programmers and designed to edit source code. Originally written by UnderWare Inc., and briefly sold under Solutions System / SLR Systems, Brief was later sold under Borland. Features included multiple windows, regular expression searching, extremely large file support, and high customizability.

• 2.x
• 3.x

Microsoft COBOL (1980) 15 DOS Windows

Cobol is a high level language designed for use in business that uses English-like commands. Microsoft got its early start by producing language products such as this one. Their other early language products included Microsoft Fortran, Microsoft Pascal, Microsoft Basic, and Macro Assembler. This product was also licensed to IBM as IBM Cobol Compiler.

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.5
• 5.0

Wolfenstein 3D (1992) 15 DOS

An early first person shooter developed by ID Software. In this game you play a captured spy that must defeat Nazi soldiers to escape from Castle Wolfenstein.

• All

Adobe Acrobat Reader (1994) 14 Document DOS MacOS

Acrobat Reader is the free software from Adobe used to read, view, and print documents created by the commercial Adobe Acrobat product. Its primary strength is that documents appear and print identically across differing systems.

• 1.0

GW-BASIC (1987) 14 DOS

GW-BASIC is a version of BASIC that was supplied with MS-DOS and as a replacement for IBM ROM basic. GW-BASIC replaced the earlier BASIC-86 supplied with some non-IBM OEM MS-DOS 1.x and 2.x. MS-DOS 5.0 and later replaced GW-BASIC with QBasic , a stripped down version of QuickBasic.

• 3.x