Microsoft BASIC (1981) 20 CPM DOS MacOS

Although Microsoft did not invent BASIC, their founding product was a BASIC interpreter for the Altair computer. The descendants below includes Microsoft's BASIC-80 (MBASIC), BASIC-86 (pre-GWBasic), BASIC for Mac, BASIC Compiler 86/88, Basic Compiler for Mac, and Professional Development System 7.x. IBM Personal Computer Basic Compiler, GW-BASIC, QuickBasic, and Visual Basic are listed separately.

• -80
• -80 Compiler 5.x
• -86 5.x
• 1.0 for Mac
• 2.0 for Mac
• 3.0 for Mac
• Compiler 1.0 for Mac

Microsoft BOB (1995) 23 Novelty Windows

Microsoft BOB is a Windows 3.1 graphical shell intended for novice users. It presents your desktop as a series of "rooms" with various selectable objects, and assists you with a friendly animated guide. It features vector based graphics that scale to any size or resolution screen, supports user profiles, and includes rudimentary editor, calendar, address book, and checking programs. It was created as a response to Packard Bell Navigator and is somewhat comparable to Apple At Ease and 3DNA.

• 1.00
• 1.00a

Microsoft COBOL (1980) 9 CPM DOS Windows

Cobol is a high level language designed for use in business that uses English-like commands. Microsoft got its early start by producing language products such as this one. Their other early language products included Microsoft Fortran, Microsoft Pascal, Microsoft Basic, and Macro Assembler. This product was also licensed to IBM as IBM Cobol Compiler.

• -80
• 5.0

Microsoft Complete Baseball (1993) 0 Reference Novelty Windows

Multimedia software from the Microsoft Home series providing reference material of the early beginnings through to the 1990s of American baseball. Runs on Windows 3.1 or later.

• 1994

Microsoft Complete Basketball (1994) 0 Reference Novelty Windows

Multimedia software from the Microsoft Home series providing reference material on players, teams, and history of the NBA league. Runs on Windows 3.1 or later.

• 1994-95

Microsoft Pinball Arcade (1998) 4 Windows

Microsoft Pinball Arcade is a pinball video game from Microsoft for Windows 95 - 98. It was released on December 15, 1998 for Microsoft Windows and in 2001 for the Game Boy Color. The game is a collection of seven real pinball tables licensed by Gottlieb. These include: Baffle Ball (1931), Humpty Dumpty (1947), Knock Out (1950), Slick Chick (1963), Spirit of '76 (1976), Haunted House (1982), and Cue Ball Wizard (1992).

• 1.0

Microsoft Publisher (1991) 32 Publishing Windows

Publisher is a desktop publishing tool from Microsoft geared towards ease of use with the home user. Microsoft publisher can be used to created professional looking newsletters, flyers, forms, and more. It includes guides and wizards that walk users through creation of common document types, while still offering powerful flexibility.

• 1.0
• 2.0
• 95 (3.0)
• 97 (4.0)
• 98 (5.0)

Microsoft Publisher Design Pack (1994) 4 Publishing Windows

The design pack is a set of templates and tools for use with Microsoft Publisher.

• 1

Microsoft SoundBits (1992) 3 Novelty Windows

Microsoft SoundBits is a Windows 3.1 program that adds a variety of annoying sounds to actions such as opening a program, or minimizing a window. Because multimedia! It comes in three different flavors: Hanna-Barbera, Hollywood Movies, and Musical Sounds.

• 1.0

Microsoft Visual Basic (1991) 858 Windows

First released in 1991, Microsoft Visual Basic was a programming environment where one could build an application by visually creating the user interface first, and then adding code. In contrast, even the smallest Visual Basic basic programs could take reams of program code to write in C or C++. Visual Basic was extremely popular for business application programming. The language itself was an interpreted BASIC dialect, however speed was maintained through the use of reusable compiled libraries (DLLs and VBX controls). These however, limited application development to Microsoft Windows.

• 1.0
• 2.0
• 3.0
• 4.0
• 5.0
• 6.0

Mindscape Complete Reference Library (1995) 0 Reference Windows

The Mindscape Complete Reference Library is a low end, and rather buggy, multimedia library targeted at the educational market. It included an encyclopedia, maps, almanac, dictionary, thesaurus, quotes, and a grammar style reference.

• 3.5

Mosbys Medical Encyclopedia (1997) 0 Reference Windows

Mosbys Medical Encyclopedia is a multimedia CD-ROM containing information about medicines, illnesses, and anatomy.

• 2.x

My Label Designer (1997) 0 Utility Windows

My Label Designer is a budget software title that enables users to easily and quickly make professional looking printer labels.

• 4.x

NBI Legend (1988) 0 Word Processor Windows

Legend, from NBI, is a document processing program for Microsoft Windows 2.x. It primarily acts as a desktop publishing program, enabling users to lay out frames or embed graphics, but is can also act as a word processor. WordStar International where it became WordStar for Windows.

• Legacy 2.x

Norton Backup (1990) 1 Utility Windows

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.

• 2.x (Win)

ObjectVision (1991) 2 Windows

ObjectVision is a forms-based programming environment from Borland. It is different from others in that all "programming" is done using decision trees rather than a programming language. ObjectVision can read and write Paradox, Btrieve, Dbase III, and III Plus databases.

• 1.x
• 2.x

Oracle Database Designer (1996) 0 Windows

Oracle Database Designer is a database model generation tool and database editing environment for Oracle Databases and ODBC compatible database. It is a "lower cost" and less powerful product than Oracle Designer/2000.

• 1.0

Packard Bell Navigator (1993) 1 Utility Other Windows

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.

• 1.0
• 1.1
• 3.6
• 3.9

PC Magazine Labs Performance Tests (1991) 0 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 Paintbrush (1984) 2 Graphics Windows

ZSoft PC Paintbrush is a bitmap drawing program visually similar to MacPaint. The earlier DOS versions were often bundled with Microsoft and Microsoft compatible mice, and were notable for supporting a huge variety of video adapters. It competed against Mouse Systems PC Paint (not related despite the similar name). ZSoft PC Paintbrush eventually became Microsoft Paintbrush included in Windows 3.x. For Microsoft's rebranded version see Microsoft Mouse and Microsoft Paintbrush

• 1.05 (Win)
• Plus 1.x (Win)

PFS:Business Plan (1992) 0 Document Windows

PFS:Business Plan is a business management program specifically tailored for creating company business plans. This involves market analysis, business forecasting, sales forecasts, balance sheets, cash flow, etc.

• 1x

Platform Builder (2000) 0 Windows

The SDK for creating Windows CE and Windows Mobile applications.

• 2.x

PowerBuilder (1994) 28 Windows

PowerBuilder, by Powersoft and later Sybase, is a development environment for building business application that uses the object-oriented "Powerscript" programming language. Primarily targeted at enterprises, it featured the ability to quickly and visually create powerful database programs under Microsoft Windows without having to worry about the complexities of C/C++ and the Windows SDK. It supports operation with many high end databases such as Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle Database Servers.

• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.x

Publish Pac (1987) 0 Graphics Publishing Windows

Publish Pac is a set of drivers and a small scanning application for use with DEST scanners. It does not do much without the scanner, but it is interesting as it runs under Microsoft Windows 1. It includes a Windows 1.04 runtime, so DOS users would not have to purchase Windows.

• 2.x

Publish-IT (1988) 0 Publishing MacOS Windows

Publish-It! is a WYSIWYG desktop publishing tool originally created by the UK based GST Software for the TOS/GEM Atari ST system. There were versions for IBM PC/GEM, Apple II, Macintosh (as "Publish-It! Easy"), and later Microsoft Windows. desktop publishing tools, it is not a full word processor, but rather imports text and focuses on high-quality formatting and printing. budget title for home users. SoftKey also released a version branded as Key Publisher

• Easy 2.x
• 4.0