Harvard Graphics (1986) 17 Graphics Windows

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.

• 1.0 for Windows
• 2.0 for Windows
• 3.0 for Windows
• 4.0 for Windows

Procomm Plus (1985) 17 Communications Windows

ProComm, from Datastorm technologies, was a powerful and very popular telecommunications program for DOS and Windows. TERMULATOR, written to fill the gap left by shareware PC-Talk when its author died. protocols for uploading and downloading, and automatic redial. The commercial "ProComm Plus" includes a scripting language, more terminal types, additional file transfer protocols, context sensitive help, support for 8 COM ports, and a professionally written manual (telecommunications)](/product/microsoft_access_business_information_access_program), Crosstalk, Relay Gold, and PFS Access. Later, it competed with QModem and Telemate.

• 1.0 For Windows
• 2.x for Windows
• 3.0 For Windows

Microsoft FrontPage (1995) 17 Publishing Windows

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

• 1.0
• 1.1
• 97 (v2)
• 98 (v3)

Stacker (1991) 17 Utility Archive DOS Windows

Stacker, from Stack Electronics, was a hard drive compression tool. It was wildly popular until Microsoft virtually eliminated the third party market for this by including their own drive compression tool with MS-DOS 6. and Expandz! Plus.

• 4.0 (DOS)

Adobe Type Manager (1991) 17 Windows MacOS

Adobe Type Manager was designed to provide scalable fonts on early Mac and Windows 3.0 systems that did not provide similar functionality natively. ATM is required by a number of graphics application originally designed to work in these environments. ATM is packaged as a "lite" installable runtime. Later releases offer a "Deluxe" version with extra font management abilities. Other OSes including NeXTSTEP, DESQview, and OS/2 come with ATM functionality built-in.

• 1.x
• 2.0x
• 3.0x
• 4.x

Windows Neptune (1999) 17 Windows

Windows Neptune was a canceled version of Windows 2000 oriented towards the home market. It had featured elements brought over from Windows ME as well as new concepts such as activity centers. No final release of Neptune shipped and most work was rolled into Whistler

• Build 5111

StarOffice (1995) 17 Word Processor Windows OS2 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

• Business Pack
• 3.0
• 3.1
• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.0

Packard Bell Navigator (1993) 16 Utility Other Windows

Packard Bell Navigator is an alternate user interface that replaces the Windows 3.1 Program Manager shell. It presents the content of your computer as a series of rooms.

• 1.0
• 1.1
• 3.6
• 3.9

Paradox (1985) 16 Windows

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.

• 4.0
• 4.5 (Win)
• 5.0 (Win)
• 7.x (Win)

LANtastic (1990) 16 DOS Windows

Lantastic is an easy to use, low cost networking system targeted at small networks and home users. It was very popular and highly rated in the early 1990s. Unlike most LAN networking software of the time, Lantastic required only installation and minimal, straightforward, configuration. Lantastic gives users the ability to share printers and files on a hard drive or CD-ROM. It is considered a "peer-to-peer" network, as there is no need for a dedicated server. Any computer may be configured as a server as well as a client. Lantastic was also very memory efficient, using minimal DOS memory in both workstation and sever modes, enabling users to run most popular DOS applications while Lantastic was running. Lantastic supported Ethernet, ARCNET and Token Ring networks. Artisoft also sold networking kits that included both network adapters and the Lantastic software. Lantastic was avaialble for DOS, Windows, and OS/2. At the time it competed against Novell Netware Lite, and many other small LAN oriented products.

• 7.0

Ventura Publisher (1986) 16 Publishing Windows

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.

• 3.0 for Windows
• 4.0 for Windows
• 4.1.x for Windows
• 4.2

Microsoft BOB (1995) 15 Novelty Windows

Microsoft BOB is a Windows 3.1 graphical shell intended for novice users. It presents your desktop as a series of "rooms" with various selectable objects, and assists you with a friendly animated guide. It features vector based graphics that scale to any size or resolution screen, supports user profiles, and includes rudimentary editor, calendar, address book, and checking programs. It was created as a response to Packard Bell Navigator and is somewhat comparable to Apple At Ease and 3DNA.

• 1.00
• 1.00a

Win32s (1992) 15 Windows

Win32s (Win32 subset) was an API layer for Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups that allowed some Win32 applications that compiled with the subset of Windows NT API functions supported through 32->16 bit thunks. Certain functions such as threading and OpenGL were not supported. As Windows 3.1 was cooperatively multi-tasked, so are Win32s applications on 3.1 and memory space is still shared.

• Beta
• 1.1
• 1.15
• 1.20
• 1.25
• 1.30

The Print Shop (1984) 15 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)

WinZip (1997) 15 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

Microsoft Project (1984) 14 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

Windows Resource Kit (1991) 14 Utility Windows

The Microsoft Windows Resource kit is a set of supplementary tools for managing and deploying Microsoft Windows. The first Windows Resource kit was released in 1991 for Windows 3.0. Most, but not all, Windows versions after that had corresponding Resource Kits. These were often freely downloadable from Microsoft.

• 3.x
• 95
• NT 4.0
• 98
• 2000

Adobe Premiere (1991) 14 Video Windows

Originally developed for the Mac, Adobe Premiere is a tool for editing videos.

• 1.x (Win)
• 4.0
• 4.2
• 5.0

ToolBook (1990) 14 Windows

Asymetrix Toolbook is an easy to use rapid application development environment for interactive applications. It is similar to HyperCard, but uses a book metaphor. ToolBook was targeted at novice programmers as well as experienced programmers that needed to create programs quickly. With ToolBook, programs are created visually, with a minimum of coding. Coding is done with OpenScript, a high-level object oriented language. It competed against other high level language environments such as Microsoft Visual Basic.

• 1.0
• 1.5
• 3.0

Crystal Reports (1992) 14 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

Microsoft Direct X (1997) 13 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

AmiPro (1991) 13 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

Microsoft COBOL (1980) 13 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.

• 5.0

PC Paintbrush (1984) 13 Graphics Windows

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

• 1.05 (Win)
• Plus 1.x (Win)

Adobe PageMill (1997) 13 Publishing Windows

PageMill, from Adobe, is a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get web page authoring tool. It was discontinued in February 2000, due to the acquisition and promotion of Adobe GoLive.

• 3.0