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Microsoft Office (1991)

281 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Publishing PIM Database Windows MacOS

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.

Microsoft Word (1983)

147 Word Processor DOS MacOS Unix OS2 Windows

The Microsoft Word word processor was first introduced for MS-DOS in 1983. Its design made use of a mouse and WYSIWYG graphics. Its crude WYSIWYG/mouse support was a direct response to the Apple Lisa/Mac, and VisiCorp Visi On. Initially it competed against many popular word processors such as WordStar, Multimate, and WordPerfect. Word for DOS was never really successful.

Microsoft Works (1986)

94 Word Processor Spreadsheet Communications Database MacOS DOS 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.

Lotus SmartSuite (1992)

93 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.

WordStar (1981)

91 Word Processor CPM DOS Windows

WordStar, originally from MicroPro, was a popular word processor during the early 80s. It was ported to a number of CP/M architectures as well as Unix and PC/MS-DOS. It competed directly against many word processors, including WordPerfect, Microsoft Word for DOS, and Multimate. By the late 80s most business word processing had moved to WordPerfect. In the early 90s, Microsoft Word for Windows took over.

WordPerfect (1983)

73 Word Processor DOS Other MacOS OS2 Unix Windows Linux

During the late 1980's, WordPerfect was THE standard word processor for DOS based PCs in big business. Under DOS, it competed mostly against Wordstar. WordPerfect for Windows enjoyed some success in the early Windows environments, but was quickly displaced by Microsoft Word for Windows. Later Windows versions were part of Borland Office/Novell PerfectOffice/Corel Office/Corel WordPerfect Office.

dBASE (1983)

69 Database DOS Windows

Ashton-Tate dBase was an early popular database management system for CP/M and MS-DOS. It was regarded as one of the killer applications for CP/M, and achieved good success. At the time of conception Ashton-Tate was a garage based company but quickly grew.

Microsoft Access (1992)

44 Database Windows

Microsoft Access is a powerful and friendly desktop database. You can design complex tables, forms, and reports through selection and drag-and drop. You can make a fully usable interactive database application without a line of code, but for more advanced functionality it supports built-in Visual Basic for Applications. It is also bundled with some versions of Microsoft Office

Oracle Forms and Reports (1997)

32 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.

America Online (1992)

21 Web Browser Chat DOS Windows

America Online was a proprietary dial-up online service that eventually grew to offerer Internet access. In the mid 1990s AOL was very heavily promoted. Every month or two, you were sure to get a free AOL floppy disk or CD-ROM in the mail. AOL originated as PC-Link.

ArcView GIS (1996)

17 Graphics Other Database Windows

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

3.0
3.3

PowerPoint (1987)

12 Presentations MacOS Windows

Microsoft PowerPoint is a graphical presentation tool that is today part of Microsoft Office. Prior to its acquisition by Microsoft, it was known as "Presenter" from Forethought Inc. These are the standalone versions. For the Office bundled versions, see Microsoft Office.

StarOffice (1995)

11 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

Oracle Server (1991)

10 Server Database DOS 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.

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Ability (1985)

10 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Communications Database DOS 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.

Lotus Approach (1993)

9 Database DOS Windows

Lotus Approach, originally from Approach Software Corporation, is a relational database management system. Approach promises "instant productivity" with its WYSIWYG form and report designer, and is compatible with many existing database formats. Approach started off as an independent product, was purchased by Lotus, and later IBM. It was included in Lotus SmartSuite for Microsoft Windows.

2.x
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96

Lotus Organizer (1992)

8 PIM Windows

A personal information manager from Lotus for Windows. Organizer was a Windows-based replacement for the DOS-based Lotus Agenda. Lotus Organizer was the most popular PIM during the mid 1990s.

1.x
2.x

AmiPro (1991)

8 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

Framework (1984)

8 Word Processor Spreadsheet Graphics Communications Database DOS

Originally created by Forefront Corporation for Ashton-Tate and first released in 1984, Framework was an early integrated office suite for DOS. It has a built in word processor, spreadsheet, database, outliner, graphing, and telecommunications.

HyperCard (1988)

8 Other Database MacOS

Hypercard is a graphical card "stack" oriented application and database programming tool for the Apple Macintosh. It features hypertext and hyperlinking of graphics and buttons, and includes an easy to use scripting language called HyperTalk. In many ways, it resembled a web browser, however it had no networking capability.

1.x
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Lotus Agenda (1988)

8 PIM DOS

Agenda is DOS based Personal Information Manager that features customizable categories, and many data retrieval features. It was criticized for not being easy to use and lacking features found in other PIMs. It was replaced by Lotus Organizer.

1.x
2.0

Lotus Word Pro (1996)

8 Word Processor Windows

Word Pro was a word processor based upon Ami Pro (originally published by Samna).
Lotus acquired Samna in 1990. Word Pro 96 is the first release to no longer use the Ami Pro naming.

96
97

Lotus Notes (1993)

7 Communications PIM Windows MacOS

Lotus Notes is a powerful e-mail and collaboration tool. It was heavily used by large corporations. It was sometimes criticized for its complexity and bloat. Notes is a client server tool, and uses the Lotus Domino server (originally just called Lotus Notes server). Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino competed against Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange.

3.x
5.x

Sidekick (1984)

6 Utility PIM DOS 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.

FileMaker (1984)

6 Database MacOS Windows

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.