PC Paintbrush (1984) 2 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

• IV (DOS)

PC Tools (1985) 27 Utility DOS

PC Tools, from Central Point Software, is a system and disk utility suite similar to the Norton Utilities. Central Point also produced a similar set of tools for the Apple Macintosh known as MacTools. Central Point Backup, bundled as part of PC-Tools, was also offered as a standalone product.

• 6.x
• 7.x
• 8.x
• 1.0 for Windows
• 9.x

PC World PowerBase/Best Of Star-Dot-Star (1988) 0 Utility DOS

PC World PowerBase/Best Of Star-Dot-Star is a set of user contributed utilities and tips. These 5.25" floppy disks were distributed alongside the PC-World magazine as a supplement to their long running Star-Dot-Star column.

• Vol III
• Vol VI
• Vol V
• Vol IV

PFS Preface (1990) 0 Utility DOS

PFS Preface is a menu system and file manager for DOS that uses an interface style similar to other PFS products.

• 1.00

Pizazz Plus (1993) 0 Graphics DOS

Pizazz Plus is a commercial screen shot utility for MS-DOS, with support for Windows. It features built in image enhancement, card-specific support for a large number of video cards, built-in printing with support for a huge number of printers, and converter export tools for many file formats.

• 4.0

PKZip (1990) 11 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

Policies Now! (1993) 0 Utility Publishing DOS

Policies Now is a document creation wizard that specializes in corporate policies. It provides general purpose templates with carefully constructed language that are customized via a series of questions. The results may be manually customized further with a built in text editor. accompanied by "DescriptionsWrite Now!" (A job description writing tool), and "Personal Policy Expert". These were renamed to "Policies Now!", "Description Now!", and "Policies Now! HR Pro Edition" respectively.

• 1.30

PrintMaster (1985) 1 Graphics DOS

Print Master was another sign and banner creation program similar to The Print Shop. The earlier version got in to trouble for looking too much like the Print Shop.

• Gold 1.0 (DOS)

Pyro (1990) 4 Novelty DOS

Pyro, from Fifth Generation Systems, is a commercial set of screen savers that started of as a simple black and white fireworks screen saver on the Apple Macintosh. It competed against AfterDark.

• 1.x (DOS)
• 2.x (DOS)

Q-DOS (1989) 0 Utility DOS

Gazelle Systems Q-DOS is a text mode based file manager for DOS. Q-DOS is a simplified file manager that presents all DOS functions visibly. It competed against many other file managers including Norton Commander and Xtree

• 3.x

QEMM (1990) 53 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.

• 5.x
• 6.x
• 7.x
• 8.x
• 9.x

QRAM (1990) 12 Utility DOS

QRAM is a memory management tool for 8088, 8086, and 286 based PCs. It can work with LIM 4.0 EMS memory cards, shadow RAM, and even VGA memory to free up or add to the base 640k memory. It also provides XMS compatible extended memory services, so it can replace Microsoft's himem.sys.

• 1.x
• 2.x

Quarterdeck GameRunner (1995) 0 Utility DOS

Quarterdeck GameRunner, from Quarterdeck Corporation, is a specialized packaging of their QEMM memory management product that is specifically designed to automatically maximize the memory and speed available to known games. DOS based games of the time used a hodgepodge of memory access methods, that varied from product to product and often created conflicts. GameRunner attempts to mitigate some of this chaos by providing automatic configuration and management.

• 2.x

QuickMenu (1991) 1 Utility DOS

QuikMenu III is an icon-based graphical menu and desktop for DOS.

• 1.x

RightGrammar (1991) 0 Utility DOS

RightGrammar 1.0 was a short lived rebranded version of RightWriter 4.0. It is not clear why it was rebranded or if there is any difference.

• 1.0

RightWriter (1987) 3 Utility DOS

RightWriter is a grammar / structure checking utility. You can feed it a document, and it will produce a marked up copy listing high level critiques such as readability, delivery strength, and jargon. It competed with Grammatik, but RightWriter generally produced superior results.

• 4.0

RIPaint (1993) 0 Graphics DOS

RIPaint is a tool for creating Remote Imaging Protocol vector graphics to be displayed over BBS/telnet using terminal emulators such as RIPTerm. quickly by the rise of the World Wide Web.

• 1.x

ScreenExtender (1992) 0 Utility DOS

ScreenExtender is a series of add-on software enhancements for popular word processors such as WordStar and WordPerfect. ScreenExtender increases the amount of text that is visible on the screen at one time. It does this by enabling smaller text characters at higher resolutions. Such text modes, up to 160 columns and 58 rows, are commonly possible with VGA adapters, but ScreenExtender can even extract extra screen real-estate on CGA, EGA, and MGA/Hercules graphics cards.

• 2.0

Search & Rescue (1998) 0 Utility DOS

PowerQuest Search & Rescue is an advanced file recovery tool. It operates as a set of bootable floppy disks that can scan a FAT or FAT32 hard drive, piecing together files even when partitions or file systems are damaged.

• 1.0

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.

• 2.0

Sideways (1985) 0 Spreadsheet Utility DOS

Sideways is a printing utility that enables you to print a spreadsheet sideways (landscape) when using a graphics printer. While that might seem like a common basic function these days, this is something that early spreadsheets lacked. Using continuous form (tractor feed) paper, a Sideways printout may seamlessly span multiple pages without having to tape or glue pages together. Sideways was sometimes bundled with spreadsheet products. "Sideways leaves no text un-turned".

• 3.3

SitBack (1991) 0 Utility DOS

SitBack is a unique backup tool that backs up files in the background while users are using their systems. This is based on the reality that most users do not want to take the time or effort to manually back up their work. SitBack can backup up to local drives or network shares, and can back up from many kinds of media.

• 3.x

Spellin! (1992) 0 Utility DOS

Spellin! is a spell checker that works from within Lotus 1-2-3 to find and correct spelling errors in spreadhseet text fields. Includes a database of 90,000 words and support custom dictionaries. Note: Lotus 1-2-3 3.x Requires Release Spellin release 3

• 1.x

SpinRite (1988) 5 Utility DOS

SpinRite, by Gibson Research, is a tool that can diagnose, repair, and rejuvenate the low-level formatting and optimize the interleave of MFM and RLL (ST412/506 interface) hard disk drives. Its pattern testing ability is also useful for verifying the operation of SCSI and IDE hard drives.

• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.0

Stacker (1991) 1 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.

• 1.0 (DOS)
• 2.0 (DOS)
• 3.x (DOS)
• 4.0 (DOS)