Microsoft Works (1986) 41 Word Processor Spreadsheet Communications Database MacOS DOS Windows

Microsoft Works was an all-in-one scaled-down Word Processor, Spreadsheet, and Database geared towards the home user. It was released in variants for early DOS, Windows, and Macintosh. Microsoft Works competed against Lotus Jazz, FrameWork, AlphaWorks/LotusWorks, PFS First Choice, and many others.

• 1.x (Mac)
• 1.x (DOS)
• 2.x (DOS)
• 3.x (DOS)
• 3.x (Mac)
• 4.0

AppleWorks (1986) 3 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Graphics Communications Database MacOS Mac OS X

AppleWorks is an all-in-one Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Database, Graphics Editor, and Presentations tool. The original product was a text-based product for the Apple II. The Apple Macintosh and Windows versions were forked from ClarisWorks in 1998 by Apple. At the time, Apple was under a lot of pressure to have a direct alternative to Microsoft Office. There were serious concerns that Microsoft might pull Microsoft Office for the Macintosh from development.

• 5.x
• 6.x

Ability (1985) 1 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Communications Database DOS

Originally released in 1984 by the Canadian company Xanaro that went bankrupt, and then by Migent, Ability is an integrated office suite for DOS that includes word processor, spreadsheet, database, telecommunications, business graphing, presentation graphics capabilities, and built in file management. It features good integration between the different components, with the ability to import, share, and dynamically update data between them. It was advertised as a very easy to use and a quick to learn system.

• 1.0
• Demo
• 1.2
• Plus 1.0
• Plus 2.0

Microsoft Office (1991) 192 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Publishing PIM Database Windows MacOS

Microsoft Office is a bundle of Microsoft's productivity application. This includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and later Mail, Office Manager, and Outlook. The "1.x" versions of Microsoft Office were simply a marketing bundle of the standalone products sold together with no other packaging changes. Even though these were distinct applications, rather than one single monolithic program, they shared a similar user interface, integrated well together and shared the ability to embed documents from one application in the documents of another.

• 2.x
• 4.3
• 97/98
• 2001 (Mac)

QuickBooks (1993) 2 Financial DOS

First introduced in 1992, QuickBooks from from Intuit, is an easy to use accounting and bookkeeping program targeted at small businesses and accounting novices. It features check writing, accounts payable and receivable, invoices, cash flow forecasting, and reporting. It provides more functionality than the home-user based Quicken.

• 2.x (DOS)

Calendar Creator Plus (1990) 1 Novelty PIM DOS

Calendar Creator Plus from Vermont Creative Software/Power Up, and later Spinnaker Software, is a tool for creating printed calendars with different styles and custom lists of events.

• 3.x (DOS)

Lotus Notes (1993) 0 Communications PIM Windows MacOS

Lotus Notes is a powerful e-mail and collaboration tool. It was heavily used by large corporations. It was sometimes criticized for its complexity and bloat. Notes is a client server tool, and uses the Lotus Domino server (originally just called Lotus Notes server). Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino competed against Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange.

• 5.x

IBM Small Business Suite (2000) 0 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Graphics Server Database Windows Linux

IBM Small Business Suite for Linux V1.6 is a Development Platform with a Set of Personal Productivity Tools. It was intended to simplify businesses transitioning to "e-business" by providing a foundation on which users could “webify” their businesses. It includes IBM and Lotus middleware products for Linux and Productivity tools for Windows.

• 1.x

ACT! (1987) 3 PIM DOS

ACT!, or "Activity Control Technology", originally from Conductor Software, and later Contact Software and then Symantec, is an easy to use business relationship management system targeted at traveling sales professionals. It can track things like billable time and expenses.

• 1.10 (DOS)

FileMaker (1984) 5 Database MacOS Windows

FileMaker is a very easy to use graphical flat-file database management tool from Claris that allows for visual form and report creation. Originally for DOS, there were Macintosh versions and later it was ported to Windows.

• 1.00
• 4.0
• Pro 1.x
• Pro 3.x
• Pro 4.x
• Pro 5.x

Oracle Server (1991) 2 Server Database DOS

Oracle Server is an enterprise grade relational database used in many corporations. It was mainly targeted at high end server operating systems, such as IBM AIX, Sun Solaris, HP UX, Digital VMS, Linux, and Microsoft Windows NT. Oracle makes current versions of their software avaialble for download, but older versions usually disappear.

• 6

Microsoft Outlook (1997) 1 Communications PIM Windows MacOS

Microsoft Outlook (not to be confused with Outlook Express) is an enterprise grade e-mail client. It is primarily intended for use with Microsoft Exchange Server. It was available as both a stand-alone product and as part of Microsoft Office.

• 97

WordPerfect Library (1998) 0 Utility Editor PIM DOS

WordPerfect Library, introduced in 1986 and later renamed WordPerfect Office (not to be confused with Corel's Windows office suite of the same name), was a package of DOS network and stand-alone utility software for use with WordPerfect. The package included a DOS menu shell and file manager, whose macros allowed text to be moved from one program to another (for example, from WordPerfect to Calendar, and vice versa), a do-all editor, apparently that of Wordperfect 3.0, which could edit binary files as well as WordPerfect or Shell macros, calendar, and a general purpose flat file database program that could be used as the data file for a merge in WordPerfect and as a contact manager.

• 2.0

Xerox Globalview (1992) 1 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Graphics Publishing Communications Database Unix

Xerox Globalview is a desktop environment and office suite originally developed for the Xerox Star. It was developed in the MESA programming language on the Xerox Star, and ported to Sun Solaris, OS/2, and Windows 3.1 (The OS/2 version requires a MESA emulator card).

• 1.00 for X / SunOS
• 1.05 for X / SunOS

ClarisWorks (1991) 9 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Graphics Publishing Database Windows MacOS

ClarisWorks is an all-in-one Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Database, Graphics Editor, and Presentations tool from Claris. In 1998, after version 5.0.2, ClairsWorks was purchased by Apple and re-branded under the "AppleWorks" name. It is not related to the Apple II AppleWorks product.

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.x
• For Kids 1.0

Quicken (1989) 5 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)

My Advanced MailList (1991) 0 Database DOS

My Advanced MailList is a comprehensive mailing list manager database that supports a wide variety of label formats, embedded graphics, import/export with other databases, and printing POST-NET barcodes.

• 3.x (DOS)

Peachtree Complete Accounting (1992) 2 Financial DOS

Peachtree Accounting was originally created in 1975 by an Altair dealer, The Computer SystemCenter, in Atlanta, Georgia to help sell Altair computers. That possibly would have made it the first accounting package for personal computers.

• 6.00 (DOS)
• 8.00 (DOS)
• 9.00 (DOS)

GroupWise (1997) 1 Communications PIM Server DOS

Originally created by WordPerfect Corp in 1987 as WordPerfect Office (groupware), and acquired by Novell in 1994 where it became GroupWise, GroupWise is a cross-platform collaboration platform that includes email, calendaring, personal information management, instant messaging, and document management.

• 5.x

Managing Your Money (1989) 5 Financial DOS

Managing Your Money is your easy-to-use personal finance manager. MYM has all you'll need to take control of your finances. You can automate your checking account, track credit investments, reduce your debts, plan your savings, decide whether to refinance your mortgage, and much more. You don't have to use all this at first or ever. But it's nice to know its all here when you need it. It is sometimes titled as "Andrew Tobias' Managing Your Money".

• 5.0
• 7.0
• 8.0
• 9.0
• 11.0
• 12.0

Claris Organizer (1995) 0 PIM MacOS

Claris Organizer is an easy to use personal information management (PIM) program for the classic Mac OS. It integrates calendar, contacts, tasks, and notes in to one small lightweight application. It has a variety of flexible print option and can print mailing labels. It competed with the Apple Newton PDA. Claris Organizer was praised for its small size and well thought out interface. It was sold to Palm when Claris was broken up, and was used as the basis for the Palm Desktop for Mac.

• 1.0
• 2.0

Sidekick (1984) 3 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

Lotus Approach (1993) 0 Database DOS

Lotus Approach, originally from Approach Software Corporation, is a relational database management system. Approach promises "instant productivity" with its WYSIWYG form and report designer, and is compatible with many existing database formats. Approach started off as an independent product, was purchased by Lotus, and later IBM. It was included in Lotus SmartSuite for Microsoft Windows.

• 2.x

R:Base (1985) 1 Database DOS

R:Base, from Microrim and first released in 1983, was a popular relational database that competed with Ashton Tate's dBASE product. R:Base was the first relational database for the IBM PC, also notable as earlier relational databases typically required more powerful hardware. R:Base also includes a form and report generator that is optimized for the capabilities of the IBM PC and features the ability to add or remove fields without losing data or relationships.

• 5000
• System V
• 2.x
• 3.x
• Personal 1.0
• 4.x

Clarion (1989) 0 Database DOS

Clarion is an advanced user friendly 4GL DBMS and programming environment for DOS and Windows. It boasted the ability to greatly reduce application development time, featured highly integrated visual creation tools, and a powerful set of program functions.

• 2.X (DOS)
• 3.0 (DOS)
• 3.1 (DOS)