The Print Shop (1984) 17 Publishing Windows

The Print Shop is a home oriented publisher capable of creating calendars, banners, greeting cards and other printable goods. It started off on the Apple II and Commodore 64 where it became popular for its simplicity and ease of use. From day one, it featured interactive editing, on-screen artwork/layout selection, print previewing, and a library of customizable clipart.

• Deluxe (Win)
• Deluxe 2.0 (Win)
• Deluxe III
• Premier 5.x (Win)
• Deluxe 6.0 (Win)
• Ensemble III
• 2002 (Mac)

QEMM (1990) 17 Utility DOS Windows

Quarterdeck QEMM is a DOS Extended Memory Manager for 386+ computer which allows you to make use of memory beyond the 640kb barrier. It can also be used with QRAM, a utility for freeing up the 640k base memory.

• 9.x

DisplayWrite (1984) 17 Word Processor DOS OS2

DisplayWrite is a word processor that is based on the IBM Displaywriter dedicated word processing system. It directly competed with software ports of dedicated word processors such as the Wang Word Processing System (or its clone MultiMate ), Lanier Word Processing Software, Xerox, DEC, or similar.

• 4
• 4/2

Crystal Reports (1992) 17 Windows

Crystal Reports, from Crystal Services/Seagate Technology Inc., is a powerful visual report creation tool for Microsoft Windows. Rather than a specific product, it is designed to work with almost any existing database product. reports from directly from within their applications. Crystal Reports was sometimes bundled with Microsoft Visual Basic. And it can be used with Crystal Reports Server for scheduled report generation.

• 1.x
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 7.x
• 8.x

LapLink (1987) 16 Communications Windows

LapLink, from Traveling Software Inc., enables users to easily and quickly move files between two DOS computers using only a serial null-modem cable or a special parallel port connector. No other hardware is needed. Laplink was extremely popular.during the late 80s and early 90s. It was infinitely easier to set up any two arbitrary PCs (often portables or laptops) with LapLink than other methods, such as DOS based networking. MS-DOS 6 bundled a similar set of file transfer tools called INTERLNK and INTERSVR.

• 7.5 for Windows 95
• 2000
• Gold (9.0)

AmiPro (1991) 16 Word Processor Windows

Ami Pro, also called just Ami initially, was a word processor sold by Samna and later Lotus Software, where it became Lotus Word Pro. Ami was one of the first word processors for Microsoft Windows, beating MS Word by about a year. Other early Windows word processors included NBI Legend and WinText

• 1.2
• 2.x
• 3.x

Instant Artist / Print Artist (1992) 15 Graphics Publishing Novelty Windows

Instant Artist, later renamed to Print Artist, is a greeting card and sign creation program that uses vectorized graphics. It was created by The Pixellite Group, the original authors of The Print Shop, and published in 1992 by Autodesk. It was later sold by Sierra On-line. It features a high quality set of generic reusable clip art. The clip art uses vector based technology that was also used in BannerMania.

• 1.0
• 2.0
• 3.0
• 4.0
• 6.0
• 8.0

Sidekick (1984) 15 Utility PIM OS2 Windows

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.

• 1.0 for OS/2
• 1.0 for Windows
• 2.0 for Windows

PKZip (1990) 15 Utility Windows

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.

• 2.5 for Windows

Paint Shop Pro (1990) 15 Graphics Windows

JASC Paint Shop Pro is a simple and easy to use bit-mapped graphics editor. It supports a wide variety of file formats, and photo manipulation functions that were comparable to PhotoShop. It has good support for editing 256 color palletized images that made it ideal for editing web graphics. It was first released in 1990 for Windows 3.0 as just "Paint Shop", and early versions gained popularity through the distribution of shareware releases. It lost popularity in 2003 when 8.0 was introduced with a redesigned UI and in 2004, JASC was acquired by Corel.

• 1.x
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.x
• 7.x

Multiplan (1983) 15 Spreadsheet DOS OS2

Microsoft Multiplan was an early 8-bit spreadsheet application for CP/M and MS-DOS with ports to numerous other platforms in the early 80s. Initially it competed against VisiCalc and later Lotus 1-2-3. A companion product, Microsoft Chart, provided graphing support. Multiplan was never ported to Windows, where it was replaced with Microsoft Excel. Excel also replaced Multiplan on the Macintosh platform.

• 4.x

ArcView GIS (1996) 15 Graphics Other Database Windows

ArcView, from Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. is a geographical information system program for Win9x/NT.

• 3.0
• 3.3

Windows Nashville (1995) 14 Windows

Windows Nashville is a cancelled Windows 9x release scheduled between Windows 95 and 98. It is also known as Windows 96.

• Build 999

Microsoft Project (1984) 13 Planning Windows MacOS

Microsoft Project is a project management chart and gantt chart generator. It is a Microsoft Office family member, and built on the Office code, although it has never shipped with any Office suite.

• 1.0
• 3.0
• 4.0
• 95
• 98
• 2000

Adobe Acrobat Reader (1994) 12 Document Windows OS2

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.

• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x

Microsoft Direct X (1997) 12 Windows

Microsoft Direct X is a library addon/update for Microsoft Windows that adds or improves the ability to render high-speed 2D or 3D graphics, and use special input devices, mainly for games.

• 5.0

XTree (1985) 12 Utility Windows

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

• Gold for Windows 4.0

Borland Pascal (1993) 12 Windows

Borland Pascal is basically a "professional" version of the Turbo Pascal product that was introduced after Turbo Pascal 6. It includes both the DOS IDE and compiler as well as the Windows IDE from Turbo Pascal For Windows. Borland Pascal was succeeded by Borland Delphi

• 7.x

AutoSketch (1987) 12 Graphics Windows

AutoSketch is a 2D vector program sold by Autodesk. Unlike artistic drawing programs, AutoSketch is specifically geared towards engineering applications. Although not as powerful as AutoCAD, it can work with 2D AutoCAD files. Autodesk also produced AutoCAD LT, a higher end 2-D drawing program. But unlike AutoSketch, AutoCAD LT was based directly on AutoCAD and worked similarly.

• 2.x (Win)
• 5.x (Win)

Microsoft Outlook (1997) 11 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
• 98

Microsoft FrontPage (1995) 11 Publishing Windows

Microsoft FrontPage is a WYSIWYG HTML editor/Cuisinart for Microsoft Windows.

• 1.0
• 1.1
• 97 (v2)
• 98 (v3)

WinZip (1997) 11 Utility Archive Windows

WinZip is an archive utility for Microsoft Windows that creates and extracts ZIP files, along with a degree of support for MS Cabinet (cab), ISO, JAR, TAR, and GZipped files.

• 6.x
• 7.0

QuickC (1987) 11 Windows

Microsoft QuickC is a C compiler with an Integrated Development Environment, designed to compete with Borland Turbo C. It was targeted at home/hobbyist users with a much lower price tag than Microsoft's corporate-oriented professional products. Microsoft also produced QuickPascal and QuickBasic with similar integrated environments.

• 1.0 for Windows

PartitionMagic (1995) 11 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
• 5.x
• 6.0
• 7.x

Microsoft Arcade (1993) 11 Windows

Microsoft Arcade is a pack of classic arcade video games ported to Microsoft Windows.

• 1.x
• Return of