NCSA Mosaic (1993) 6 Web Browser Windows

First released in 1993, NCSA Mosaic was the first really popular web browser. Unlike the original browser, WorldWideWeb on NeXT, Mosaic was available for the Microsoft Windows platform and added features such as inline graphics viewing. It was developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. NCSA Mosaic was distributed freely for non commercial use, but required a license for commercial business use. It was licensed by a number of third party OEMs, including Microsoft, who used it for the basis of Microsoft Internet Explorer. In 1995, its popularly quickly gave way to Netscape Navigator.

• 1

NetManage Chameleon (1993) 14 Communications Windows

NetManage Chameleon is a small and efficient TCP/IP networking stack and utility suite for Microsoft Windows. It includes an FTP client, Telnet client, E-mail client, and an NFS system for interoperation with Unix networks. Other GUI utilities include Bind, Finger, Ping, TFTP, FTP Server a TN3270 terminal emulator, Whois, and SNMP. Earlier versions ran on Windows 3.0 and 3.1.

• 3.x
• 4.x

Netscape (1994) 41 Web Browser Windows Unix MacOS

Netscape Navigator/Communicator was the first commercial web browser, displacing the free NCSA Mosaic. 1.0 was first released in December 1994, and initially offered advanced features such as progressively rendering pages as they loaded. It quickly gained many other features and capabilities and became the most popular web browser in the mid 1990s. One reason for its popularity, it was licensed freely for personal and non-profit use, although companies were expected to pay for a license. It later competed with Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari, and eventually was open sourced in to the Mozilla browser.

• 0.x
• 1.x

NeverEnding Disk (1994) 3 Utility Windows

NeverEnding Disk (or "NED"), from Sytron, is a personal storage manager that goes beyond just an archiver or backup tool. easily compress or migrate them to external media, and easily find and retrieve them when you need them.

• 2.x

NewWave (1989) 6 Other Windows

HP NewWave is an alternate shell for Microsoft Windows that gives it an icon-object desktop. It attempts to hide the file system from the user, instead presenting them with "objects" that may have many more properties and longer descriptions. It supports a feature called "Hot connects" that automatically updates data across different files.

• 4.x

Norton Anti-Virus (1990) 14 Utility DOS Windows

Originally written by Symantec and sold as Symantec Antivrus for Macintosh, it became part of the "Norton" branded products sold by Symantec after they acquired Peter Norton Computing. Norton Anti-Virus became a popular product on DOS, Windows, and Macintosh (SAM was renamed to NAV in 1998) and battled the then-new threat of malicious software. In 2015, Symantec unified their security product lineup under the single "Norton Security" product. It was also bundled with Norton SystemWorks.

• Michelangelo Edition

Norton Backup (1990) 8 Utility Windows

Norton Backup, from Symantec, is a fast and easy to use backup tool for MS-DOS. The original 1.0 suffered from reliability problems, but these were fixed in 1.1. It does not include a backup scheduler. It competed against backup utilities such as PC Tools Deluxe PC Backup, Taketwo Manager, Gazelle Systems Back-It, Backup Pro, FastBack Plus, and Keep Track Plus.

• 2.x (Win)

Norton Desktop (1991) 26 Utility Windows

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

• 2.0 for Windows
• 2.2 for Windows
• 3.0 for Windows

Norton Utilities (1983) 96 Utility MacOS

The Norton Utilities is a suite of disk and system utilities designed to enhance system performance and stability. It started off as a set of disk utilities written by Peter Norton, and later was sold by Symantec. It competed against Central Point PC Tools and the Mace Utilities. In 2003, Norton Utilities was merged with Norton SystemWorks, but later split back out.

• 2.0 for Mac
• 3.x for Mac

ObjectVision (1991) 6 Windows

ObjectVision is a forms-based programming environment from Borland. It is different from others in that all "programming" is done using decision trees rather than a programming language. ObjectVision can read and write Paradox, Btrieve, Dbase III, and III Plus databases.

• 2.x

Omnipage Pro (1992) 12 Document Windows

Omnipage is an optical character recognition (scanned image) application that can export to a number of document formats. It was often bundled with scanners.

• 2.x
• 5.0

Ontrack Drive Rocket (1994) 2 DOS Windows

Drive Rocket is an IDE driver for DOS/Windows 3.1 that bypasses the BIOS and makes use of newer IDE features to accelerate hard disk transfer speeds.

• 1.0

Oracle Office (1993) 2 Communications Windows

Oracle Office 2.0 is a groupware solution from Oracle, similar to Lotus Notes or WordPerfect Office (Groupware), but uses Oracle's database as a backend and includes database functionality in addition to document processing. It featured the ability to connect thousands of users at once. This software later became "Oracle Documents".

• 2.0

Packard Bell Navigator (1993) 9 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

PageMaker (1987) 156 Publishing Windows MacOS

Aldus PageMaker, later Adobe PageMaker, is a desktop publishing program for Mac and Windows. First released in 1985, PageMaker was the first desktop publishing program for the Macintosh. It was followed over a year later with the release of 1.0 for the IBM PC. The PC version was a notable application as it was one of the few rare applications which would run under Windows 1.x. PC PageMaker 1.0 bundled a runtime version of Windows. This enabled MS-DOS users who had not decided to buy Windows to run PageMaker. Aldus skipped version 2.0 on the PC to bring version number in sync with the 3.0 Mac product.

• 5.0

Paradox (1985) 27 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)

PC Speaker Driver (Windows 3.1) (1992) 7 Windows

A PC speaker driver that enables Windows 3.1 programs such as the Windows Sound Recorder to play .WAV format files.

• PC Speaker Driver (Windows 3.1)

PC Tools (1985) 95 Utility Windows

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.

• 2.0 for Windows

PC-NFS (1994) 5 Windows

PC-NFS, from SunSelect/SunMicrosystems is an enterprise-grade NFS client and utility set for Microsoft Windows. NFS is a primitive TCP/IP network file sharing system used by Unix systems. UNIX systems, VMS minicomputers and IBM mainframes. It also include telnet and Unix printing support.

• 5.x

PC-Tools File Manager (1994) 3 Utility Windows

This is a standalone version of the enhanced filemanager that was bundled with PC-Tools for Windows. This version was released after Symantec acquired Central Point and discontinued the PC-Tools product.

• 3.0

pcANYWHERE (1990) 20 Communications Windows

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

• 1.0 (Win)

Peachtree Complete Accounting (1992) 11 Financial Windows

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.

• Crystal 5.0
• 3.0 (Win)

Personal Attorney (1994) 2 Document Windows

Personal Attorney is a program that automatically generates a number of legal templates for use in word processors.

• 1.x

Persuasion (1991) 6 Presentations MacOS

Aldus Persuasion is a presentation and slide creation program. "With the support that Persuasion offers - professional quality slides, overheads, handouts, and speaker notes - you can deliver your presentation with more confidence and ease than ever before." After version 2.x, Persuasion was purchased by Adobe.

• 3.0

PFS:Business Plan (1992) 0 Document Windows

PFS:Business Plan is a business management program specifically tailored for creating company business plans. This involves market analysis, business forecasting, sales forecasts, balance sheets, cash flow, etc.

• 1x