LapLink (1987) 4 Communications Windows

LapLink, from Traveling Software Inc., enables users to easily and quickly move files between two DOS computers using only a serial null-modem cable or a special parallel port connector. No other hardware is needed. Laplink was extremely popular.during the late 80s and early 90s. It was infinitely easier to set up any two arbitrary PCs (often portables or laptops) with LapLink than other methods, such as DOS based networking. MS-DOS 6 bundled a similar set of file transfer tools called INTERLNK and INTERSVR.

• 7.5 for Windows 95
• 2000
• Gold (9.0)

Lotus Mail (1998) 1 Communications Windows

Lotus Mail was an interim product targeted at users of the older Lotus cc:Mail product, with the intent being that they would eventually switch to Lotus Notes/Domino. Lotus Mail features a user interface similar to cc:Mail, LDAP support, and powerful filtering options. Lotus Mail lacked support for HTML formatted e-mail (good!).

• 4.x

Lotus Notes (1993) 6 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.

• 5.x

Macromedia Fireworks (1999) 1 Graphics Windows

Macromedia Fireworks is a bitmap and vector graphics editor. It is specifically designed to aid in making web graphics.

• 2.0
• 3.0
• 4.0

Micrografx Graphics Suite (1997) 0 Graphics Windows

Micrografx Graphics Suite 2 is an all-in-one graphics suite that includes Micrografx Designer, Flowcharter, Picture Publisher, and Simply 3D.

• 2

Micrografx Picture Publisher (1990) 3 Graphics Publishing Windows

Formerly Astral Picture Publisher, Micrografx Picture Publisher is a bitmapped image editor for Windows that offered powerful and feature rich 24-bit color image editing on the Microsoft Windows platform prior to Photoshop for Windows. Picture Publisher was briefly considered the leading image editor on the Microsoft Windows platform until Adobe made Photoshop available for Windows.

• 6.0

Micrografx Windows Draw (1986) 12 Graphics Windows

Micrografx Draw is a free-form vector based drawing program with a collection of clipart. The earlier versions are especially notable as being among the few programs produced for Microsoft Windows 1.x.

• 4.0
• 5.0
• 6.0

Microsoft GIF Animator (1997) 2 Graphics Windows

Back before HTML 5, Flash, or fancy scripting, the only way you could be sure that you would annoy your readers was to use animated GIFs. Not wanting to disappoint, Microsoft made their own GIF creation program: GIF Construction Set. In the late 90's sprit of crushing competition, Microsoft gave it away for free. It was also bundled with Microsoft Image Composer and Microsoft FrontPage. Construction Set. Although in practice GIF Construction set worked better for building the animated GIFs, and then GIF Animator was useful for touching things up afterwards. (Mainly removing the shareware GIF Construction Set's "created by" comment text. :P )

• 1.0

Microsoft Outlook (1997) 12 Communications PIM Windows MacOS

Microsoft Outlook (not to be confused with Outlook Express) is an enterprise grade e-mail client. It is primarily intended for use with Microsoft Exchange Server. It was available as both a stand-alone product and as part of Microsoft Office.

• 97
• 98

Microsoft Works (1986) 33 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.

• 4.5
• 5.x
• 6.0
• 9.0

NetManage Chameleon (1993) 13 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.

• 6.0
• 8.0

Paint Shop Pro (1990) 30 Graphics Windows

JASC Paint Shop Pro is a simple and easy to use bit-mapped graphics editor. It supports a wide variety of file formats, and photo manipulation functions that were comparable to PhotoShop. It has good support for editing 256 color palletized images that made it ideal for editing web graphics. It was first released in 1990 for Windows 3.0 as just "Paint Shop", and early versions gained popularity through the distribution of shareware releases. It lost popularity in 2003 when 8.0 was introduced with a redesigned UI and in 2004, JASC was acquired by Corel.

• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.x
• 7.x

PATHWORKS (1994) 0 Web Browser Communications Windows

PATHWORKS is a network client suite that enables PCs to communicate with VMS and Ultrix systems from Digital Equipment Corporation.

• 32 V7.x

pcANYWHERE (1990) 1 Communications Windows DOS

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

• 7.5 (Win)
• 8.0 (Win)

PerfectWorks (1995) 3 Word Processor Spreadsheet Graphics Database Windows

PerfectWorks is an all-in-one word processing/spreadsheet/database/drawing program originally sold by WordPerfect Corp, and later by Novell.

• 3.x

PhotoDeluxe (1996) 10 Graphics Windows MacOS

Adobe PhotoDeluxe is a simplified photo manipulation tool targeted at novice users. It performs a variety of tasks, including red-eye removal, shadow dropping, smudging, and cloning and can produce "projects" such as cards and calendars. It is designed to integrate with scanners and digital cameras. It competed against Microsoft Picture-It

• 1.0
• 2.0
• 3.x
• 4.x

PhotoFinish (1992) 8 Graphics Windows

PhotoFinish is an image editor that features a number of effects geared towards photo touch-ups or enhancements. It also supports acquiring images from a scanner. It was produced and sold by ZSoft, who earlier created PC Paintbrush. PhotoFinish somewhat resembles PC Paintbrush, but has many more features. After SoftKey bought out ZSoft, they rebranded this product as "PC PaintBrush 1.0" and sold it a a budget title.

• 4.0

Photoshop (1988) 58 Graphics Windows MacOS

Photoshop is a powerful drawing and photo manipulation program for both Mac and Windows. The Macintosh version was released by Adobe in 1990, although a very small number were bundled with Barneyscan slide scanners prior to that. Photoshop contained many advanced features including layered images, advanced color control, and plug-ins. Prior to its release, many of its features were only found in high end dedicated photo pre-processing systems.

• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.x

Photoshop Lightroom (2009) 1 Graphics Windows

Photoshop Lightroom is a utility from Adobe for Photoshop that aids in applying post-processing to high amounts of images in batch.

• 3.x

PhotoWorks (1995) 3 Graphics Windows

PhotoWorks is an image file viewer and simplified image processor. It was designed as part of a film scanning service provided by Seattle FilmWorks in which customers received a CD-ROM of their scanned images in Seattle FilmWorks proprietary format. The PhotoWorks software was required to view the images, but can export to other formats. PhotoWorks also enables users to perform basic image adjustments such contrast, brightness, or cropping.

• 2.x

Picture It! (1996) 7 Graphics Windows

Picture It!, from Microsoft, is a photo image adjustment tool for novice users. It includes a number of standard touch-up functions such as red-eye adjustment, resizing, brightness, contrast, and cropping. It can make direct use of scanners and digital cameras. All functions are presented as a dumbed down step-by step series of tabs and menus. Picture-It competed against Adobe Photodeluxe.

• 1.0
• 2.0
• 99

PrintMaster (1985) 17 Graphics Windows

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 3.0 (Win)
• Gold 4.0 (Win)

Procomm Plus (1985) 23 Communications Windows

ProComm, from Datastorm technologies, was a powerful and very popular telecommunications program for DOS and Windows. TERMULATOR, written to fill the gap left by shareware PC-Talk when its author died. protocols for uploading and downloading, and automatic redial. The commercial "ProComm Plus" includes a scripting language, more terminal types, additional file transfer protocols, context sensitive help, support for 8 COM ports, and a professionally written manual (telecommunications)](/product/microsoft_access_business_information_access_program), Crosstalk, Relay Gold, and PFS Access. Later, it competed with QModem and Telemate.

• 3.0 For Windows

PuTTY (2008) 0 Communications Windows

PuTTY is a free and open-source terminal emulator, serial console and network file transfer application.

• For Windows NT 3.51

QuickLink (1990) 0 Communications DOS Windows

Quick Link Fax, from Smith Micro Software, is a program for receiving and sending Faxes under DOS and Windows 3.1 with a compatible FAXModem. It competed against Delrina WinFax. On the Macintosh, Smith Micro provided MacComCenter.

• II 3.2 (Win)
• 3.0 (Win)