Norton Backup (1990) 4 Utility DOS

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.

• 1.x
• 2.x

Norton Commander (1986) 120 Utility DOS OS2

Norton Commander is a MS-DOS based file shell that was widely popular due to it's two column design. You could easily copy and move files between one folder or another, execute DOS commands and more. It competed against many other file managers including Gazelle Q-DOS and Xtree

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x
• 1.x (OS2)
• 4.x
• 5.x
• 5.5x

Packard Bell Navigator (1993) 17 Utility Other DOS

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.

• 3.5

PageMaker (1987) 76 Publishing Windows OS2

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.

• 3.01

Partition Commander (1988) 1 Utility DOS

Partition Commander is a Wizard based partition and disk utilization tool. It supports FAT, FAT32, NTFS, HPFS, and some Unix file systems.
It runs in real-mode DOS and installs from only two floppy disks. It competed directly against Partition Magic. Memory Commander, a 386 Expanded/Extended Memory Manager.

• 1.x

PartitionMagic (1995) 33 Utility DOS Windows

A tool from PowerQuest, and later Symantec, that enables manipulation of partitions through its own bootable media. PartitionMagic can shrink, grow, or move partitions without the need to backup and restore files in that partition. It supported a variety of file systems, and the core DOS-based parition tool fit on a bootable 1.44mb floppy disk. It was extremely popular, and made installing or removing multiple OSes much easier.

• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x

PC Magazine Labs Performance Tests (1991) 3 Utility DOS Windows OS2

These disks contain Hardware and Graphics tests from 1990 for Microsoft Windows 2, and OS/2 1.x Presentation Manager.

• 1.x

PC World PowerBase/Best Of Star-Dot-Star (1988) 6 Utility DOS

PC World PowerBase/Best Of Star-Dot-Star is a set of user contributed utilities and tips. These 5.25" floppy disks were distributed alongside the PC-World magazine as a supplement to their long running Star-Dot-Star column.

• Vol I
• Vol II
• Vol III
• Vol VI
• Vol V
• Vol IV

PC-Fullbak (1988) 0 Utility DOS

PC-Fullbak was a small low-cost hard drive backup program that aggressively competed head-on against Fifth Generation Systems Fastback. It was comparatively speedy, and supported appending to existing backups. under the name "PC-FullbakEZ". There were also versions for the Macintosh.

• 2.x

PC/DACS (1995) 1 Utility OS2

PC/DACS is a system utility that adds password protected access control to a computer. It support session timeout, usage time restrictions, boot protection, system drive encryption, and GUI tools for all administrative tasks.

• 2.x

Perceive Personal (1993) 0 Publishing DOS

This is an early OCR program for DOS based computers.

• 1.1 for DOS

PFS Preface (1990) 0 Utility DOS

PFS Preface is a menu system and file manager for DOS that uses an interface style similar to other PFS products.

• 1.00

Popcorn Misspeller's Dictionary (1988) 0 Word Processor Utility DOS

Popcorn Misspeller's Dictionary, from Popcorn Software, is a TSR program with a popup list of commonly misspelled words. You may find a word by typing it, but it does not make corrective suggestions.

• 1.x

Powerbase (1989) 0 Utility DOS

Powerbase is a set of utilities distributed by PC World

• Vol II

Print Magic (1988) 1 Publishing DOS

Print Magic is a sign, card, and banner printing program, similar to Print Master. Compared to others of the time, its functionality is rather crude, lacking previews or undo.

• 1.0

QAPlus (1989) 1 Utility DOS

QAPlus is an extensive set of tools to test the functionality of a PC, measure performance, and optimize the configuration. It can test motherboard resources, RAM, video cards, I/O ports, and floppy drives. Later versions supported Microsoft Windows. It competed with tools like Checkit and AMI Diagnostics.

• 3.x

QRAM (1990) 7 Utility DOS

QRAM is a memory management tool for 8088, 8086, and 286 based PCs. It can work with LIM 4.0 EMS memory cards, shadow RAM, and even VGA memory to free up or add to the base 640k memory. It also provides XMS compatible extended memory services, so it can replace Microsoft's himem.sys.

• 1.x
• 2.x

QuarkXPress (1986) 32 Publishing DOS

QuarkXPress was THE standard publishing software during the 1990s. However it failed to update its product line to newer technologies in a timely manager, charged insane amounts for updates or additional features that should have been built in to the software, and became very abusive to their customers. Later versions required a parallel port/ADB copy protection dongle. They lost most of their market share to Adobe InDesign.

• 3.x

Quarterdeck GameRunner (1995) 2 Utility DOS

Quarterdeck GameRunner, from Quarterdeck Corporation, is a specialized packaging of their QEMM memory management product that is specifically designed to automatically maximize the memory and speed available to known games. DOS based games of the time used a hodgepodge of memory access methods, that varied from product to product and often created conflicts. GameRunner attempts to mitigate some of this chaos by providing automatic configuration and management.

• 2.x

Quarterdeck Manifest (1988) 1 Utility DOS

Manifest is an easy to use diagnostic program that provides incredibly detailed information about DOS resource usage, loaded programs, IO devices, and memory usage including EMS, XMS, and UMB memory. It was available as a standalone program and bundled with QEMM and Deskview. Tools like this were essential for resolving compatibility problems between poorly behaved DOS programs and highly customized environments, especially in task switched or multitasking environments.

• 1.x

RightGrammar (1991) 1 Utility DOS

RightGrammar 1.0 was a short lived rebranded version of RightWriter 4.0. It is not clear why it was rebranded or if there is any difference.

• 1.0

Search & Rescue (1998) 1 Utility DOS

PowerQuest Search & Rescue is an advanced file recovery tool. It operates as a set of bootable floppy disks that can scan a FAT or FAT32 hard drive, piecing together files even when partitions or file systems are damaged.

• 1.0

Sideways (1985) 4 Spreadsheet Utility DOS

Sideways is a printing utility that enables you to print a spreadsheet sideways (landscape) when using a graphics printer. While that might seem like a common basic function these days, this is something that early spreadsheets lacked. Using continuous form (tractor feed) paper, a Sideways printout may seamlessly span multiple pages without having to tape or glue pages together. Sideways was sometimes bundled with spreadsheet products. "Sideways leaves no text un-turned".

• 3.11
• 3.3

SitBack (1991) 1 Utility DOS

SitBack is a unique backup tool that backs up files in the background while users are using their systems. This is based on the reality that most users do not want to take the time or effort to manually back up their work. SitBack can backup up to local drives or network shares, and can back up from many kinds of media.

• 3.x

Software Bridge (1989) 0 Utility DOS

Software Bridge is a set of executable word processor file converters. It can convert between a large number of word processors while preserving formatting.

• 3.x