Ability (1985) 7 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Communications Database Windows

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.

• 2000
• 2002

Adobe Acrobat (1993) 60 Publishing Windows MacOS

Adobe Acrobat, first released in 1993, is a tool for creating portable electronic documents. Its documents retain complex formatting when used across differing systems, so that they appear identical when viewed on screen or printed to a printer. Acrobat accomplishes this by encapsulating Adobe's PostSript printer language in to a document file format and offering the ability to embed fonts that are not present on the target system.

• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.x

Adobe InDesign (1999) 11 Publishing Windows

Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing tool that replaced Aldus/Adobe PageMaker. Initially it competed with Quark XPress

• 1.0
• 1.5
• 2.0

Adobe PageMill (1997) 9 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

Adobe PressReady (1999) 3 Publishing Windows

Adobe PressReady is a professional printing and proofing tool that was aimed for selected inkjet printers to allow better color reproduction from screen to print. Requires Windows 95/98 with at least 48 MB RAM, otherwise NT 4.0 with 64 MB RAM. Supported printer models were: Canon BJC-8500, Epson Stylus Color 800, 850, 1520, and 3000, and HP DeskJet 895C, 1120C, and 2000C. The choice of printers were supposedly what inkjet printers graphic designers were using at the time.

• 1.0

ArcView GIS (1996) 17 Graphics Other Database Windows

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

• 3.3

Citrix MetaFrame (1998) 3 Server Windows

Citrix MetaFrame is an add-on for Windows Terminal Server that provides Citrix ICA connectivity and additional management tools. Unlike WinFrame, this is not an entire OS.

• 1.0
• 4.0

CorelDraw! (1989) 56 Graphics Publishing Windows

Corel Draw is a vector based drawing and illustration program. It is primarily a Windows application, but was ported to Mac OS, Mac OS X, Linux, CTOS and OS/2. It competed against Aldus Freehand, Adobe Illustrator, and Micrografx Designer.

• 7.0

Expert Stationery Shop (1998) 0 Publishing Windows

Expert Stationery Shop is a budget-oriented graphics program that specialized in quickly and easily creating glitzy looking business related documents, such as letterhead, envelopes, fax cover sheets, business cards, signs, and awards. It features specialized clipart, extra TrueType fonts, extra text effects, and a logo creation tool.

• 1.0

FileMaker (1984) 18 Database Windows MacOS

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.

• Pro 5.x

IBM Small Business Suite (2000) 1 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

Instant Artist / Print Artist (1992) 38 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.

• 6.0
• 8.0

Lotus 1-2-3 (1983) 95 Spreadsheet Windows

Lotus 1-2-3 was an early spreadsheet application available for MS-DOS. It became extremely popular in the late 1980s, displacing the former leader VisiCalc. Lotus had difficulties adapting 1-2-3 to the Windows environment, and was overtaken by Microsoft Excel. Spreadsheet functionality was also included in Lotus Symphony. Later versions were included in Lotus SmartSuite.

• 9.0 (Win)
• 9.1 (Win)
• 9.5 (Win)

Lotus SmartSuite (1992) 54 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations PIM Database Windows OS2

IBM/Lotus SmartSuite is an office suite from Lotus software for Windows and OS/2. SmartSuite includes SmartCenter, 1-2-3, Word Pro, Freelance Graphics, Approach, Organizer, and ScreenCam.

• 9.0
• 9.1
• For OS2 Warp 4
• 9.5
• 9.6
• 9.7
• 9.8

Microsoft Exchange (1996) 2 Chat PIM Server Windows

Exchange is a proprietary e-mail and groupware server software from Microsoft for Windows Server. The first version publicly sold was Exchange Server 4.0. The number 4.0 was used as it was a replacement for Microsoft Mail 3.x. At release, unlike other desktop/lan e-mail solutions it featured client/server communications rather than using file sharing, used a powerful messaging protocol, and stored all message and address book information in a database. It eventually evolved to include scheduling and many other functions. The Exchange Client (later Microsoft Outlook) supported rich text formatting, and the ability to create such things as e-mail forms.

• 2000

Microsoft FrontPage (1995) 47 Publishing Windows

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

• 98 (v3)

Microsoft Greetings (1997) 0 Publishing Novelty Windows

Microsoft Greetings is a greeting card maker for Microsoft Windows 9x/NT. It was made in conjunction with Hallmark.

• 99 (3.0)

Microsoft Office (1991) 281 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Publishing PIM Database Windows

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.

• 2000
• XP (2002 Beta)

Microsoft Vizact (1999) 0 Publishing Windows

Microsoft Vizact 2000, was an application used to create HTML+TIME documents, adding effects such as animation.

• 2000

Microsoft Works (1986) 143 Word Processor Spreadsheet Communications Database 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.

• 5.x
• 6.0

Oracle Discoverer (1998) 3 Server Windows

Oracle Discoverer is an ad-hock reporting tool used with Oracle databases. It can view and edit data and produce reports and graphs.

• 3.x
• 4.x

Oracle Forms and Reports (1997) 7 Database Windows

Oracle Forms and Reports is a GUI application builder. It is similar to Visual Basic, but uses the PL/SQL language and integrates heavily with Oracle Server databases.

• 6i

Oracle Server (1991) 10 Server Database Windows

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.

• 8

Presentation Server (2005) 0 Server Windows

Presentation Server, from Citrix, is an application virtualization product that allows users to connect to applications on Windows Server remotely.

• 4.0

Remedy Action Request System (2001) 0 Server Database Windows

Remedy Action Request System is a powerful and flexible high-end client/server based helpdesk management program. It featured an easy to use design that was based around actual helpdesk needs. It was used in many large businesses

• 4.5