Switcher (1985) 0 Utility MacOS

Switcher is an add on utility program written by Andy Hertzfield and released by Apple that adds the ability to load multiple programs and quickly switch between them - something that MacOS lacked at this point.

• 4.x

System Commander (1996) 14 Utility DOS

System commander, from V Communications, Inc, was a commercial boot manager for PCs. It offered a graphical menu and the ability to hide other partitions from the selected OS. It supported a variety of OSes including DOS, Windows 9x, Windows NT/2000, Linux, OS/2, and various Unixes.

• 2.x
• 3.x
• Deluxe 4.00
• 2000 (5.x)

T/Maker (1985) 2 Word Processor Spreadsheet Database DOS

T/Maker, first released in 1980 for 8-bit CP/M, was one of the first "integrated" software programs. It brings together File Management, Word Processing, Spell Checking, Spreadsheet, Database Management, List Processing, Data Transfer, Graphics (Bar Charts), and Programming. These components can work together, for example a document can contain functional spreadsheet fields.

• 4.x

Textra (1985) 0 Word Processor DOS

Textra, from the University of Michigan based Ann Arbor Software, was a small and fast word processor highly optimized for speed and rapid data entry. First released in 1982 Textra, like many other early PC word processors, was born out of the lack of a decent IBM PC editor/word processor. Textra featured a full set of text manipulation commands, common text formatting abilities, and full screen editing. It was specifically designed for the IBM PC, giving it faster load and save times and the most responsive user interface possible. It was priced much lower than most other text editors or word processors.

• 3.x
• 6.0
• 7.0

The All-Star Utilities Pac (1992) 0 Utility Other Windows

The All-Star Utilities Pac is a set of small windows-based productivity utilities. It was a freebie given away by PC Magazine.

• 1.0

The Benchmark (1984) 0 Word Processor DOS

The Benchmark was an early, and somewhat short lived, word processor. This version is for the NEC APC running CP/M-86.

• 3.x

The Program Director (1989) 0 Utility DOS

The Program Director is a tiny little customizable menuing program. It was sold commercially as budget software.

• 1989

TI Writer Word Processor (1982) 0 Word Processor Other

TI-Writer was the standard word processor for the TI-99/4A. To use TI-Writer, you must have the TI-Writer cartridge (needed to load the disk software) and a TI-99/4A with the 32k RAM and disk expansion options.

• 1982

Timeworks DOS Office (1993) 2 Word Processor Spreadsheet Database DOS

Timeworks DOS Office, from Timeworks, Inc., is an office suite consisting of the Timeworks Word Writer PC word processor, the Timeworks SwftCalc spreadsheet, and the Timeworks Data Manager desktop database.

• 1.0

Toolworks Backup Pro (1990) 0 Utility DOS

Backup Pro, from The Software Toolworks, is an easy to use backup program for MS-DOS. It features drop down menus and mouse support. It was sometimes bundled with OEM computers, and was sold for very low cost compared to others.

• 1.x

ToyBox Menu Manager / Magic Desk (1992) 2 Utility DOS

ToyBox II, later renamed to Magic Desk, is a simplified graphical menu system that lets you launch your DOS applications from a selection of tiled iconic buttons. Supports nested hierarchies, includes an icon editor, and a number of common icons.

• 2.x
• 3.x (Magic Desk)

Tree86 (1990) 0 Utility DOS

Tree86, from The Aldridge Company, is an easy to use tree-based file manager for DOS.

• 3.x

Trend Micro Chip Away (1993) 0 Utility DOS

Released in the early 90s by the Japanese company Trend Micro Devices, Inc (later just Trend Micro), Chip Away Viruses is a DOS based virus scanner that is intended to run from a hardware product built in to a PC motherboard before the system boots. It includes a custom embeddable DOS (called X-DOS), but it can be run from regular DOS. Trend Micro also produced the products PC Rx (A regular software virus scanner), and PC-cillin (a hardware/software combo that keeps critical boot information in a special device). Users sometimes misinterpreted the name "ChipAway Virus" as being a virus itself.

• 2.x

Turbo Lightning (1986) 0 Utility DOS

Borland's Turbo Lightning is a DOS based TSR spell checker. It can also look up Synonyms.

• 1.x

UniForm (1984) 0 Utility CPM

UniForm is a utility that provides seamless file access to a wide variety of system-specific CP/M and DOS disk formats, enabling easy transfer of files between otherwise incompatible system.

• 1984

V-Print (1984) 0 Utility DOS

V-Print, from CompuView, is a printing product designed to accompany VEDIT.

• 2.x

Varsity Scripsit (1987) 2 Word Processor DOS

Varsity Scripsit is a menu driven, easy to use, low cost word processor sold by Tandy/RadioShack and targeted toward academic users. It features footnotes, built in help, split screen, spell checker, automatic hyphenation, table of contents and keyword index generation, user definable macros, reference markers, paragraph locking, line drawing, and phonetic symbols.

• 1.0

Virex (1998) 0 Utility Windows

Virex is another of the 1990's who-owns-it-this-week products. Originally a virus scanner and disk utility set for Macintosh and PC from Microcom, who then became Datawatch, sold the Macintosh version of Virex to Dr. Solomon's. In 1998 all of this was bought out by Network Associates - a merger of McAfee and Network General Corp.

• 5.x (Mac)

ViruSafe (1991) 0 Utility DOS

ViruSafe is a fast, comprehensive yet easy to use virus scanner produced by the makers of XTree. It can find known viruses and monitor files for any kind of unwanted changes. It features the ability to schedule scans, and can create a "recovery" boot disk to deal with boot sector viruses.

• 4.5

VisiWord (1983) 0 Word Processor DOS

VisiWord is a solid and well designed word processor for the IBM PC from VisiCorp. It was part of VisiCorp's integrated office application suite that also included VisiCalc, VisiFile, VisiSpell, VisiTrend/Plot, and VisiTutor. It competed against EasyWriter and Volkswriter. This software runs under DOS 1.x and DOS 2.x. A follow up update to VisiWord offered better integration with VisiSpell. a GUI based environment. But that did not catch on. The similarly named Visi On Word word processor is not directly related to VisiWord.

• 1.00

Volkswriter (1982) 3 Word Processor DOS

Volkswriter, from Lifetree Software Inc, was an early easy to use word processor for the IBM PC. Development of Volkswriter was inspired by the horridness of EasyWriter, and for a brief time it was possibly the only usable word processor for the IBM PC before an IBM version of WordStar was released. The "Deluxe" version will work with larger documents and has more features.

• 1.2
• Deluxe 2.x
• 3.0
• 4.0

Wang Freestyle (1990) 2 Utility Publishing DOS

Wang Freestyle is an "annotation" program that operates by making screen shots of DOS applications, to which the user may then add hand-written notes using a stylus or add a voice recording with a telephone-like handset. It features a Macintosh-like desktop that displays the annotated documents graphically on a proprietary high resolution monitor, and integrates a form of mail and fax.

• 1.x

Windows Resource Kit (1991) 21 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

WINProbe (1995) 2 Utility Windows

WINProbe is a commercial system information and diagnostic program from Landmark International, maker of benchmark and diagnostic programs. criticized as being rather buggy. Landmark also produced the separate Sysinfo product for DOS.

• 3.1

Word for Word (1989) 0 Utility DOS Windows

Word for Word is a document converter that features the ability to convert multiple documents automatically, while retaining as much formatting as possible.

• 4.x (DOS)
• 6.x (Win)