Adobe Acrobat (1993) 17 Publishing Windows Unix MacOS

Adobe Acrobat, first released in 1993, is a tool for creating portable electronic documents. Its documents retain complex formatting when used across differing systems, so that they appear identical when viewed on screen or printed to a printer. Acrobat accomplishes this by encapsulating Adobe's PostSript printer language in to a document file format and offering the ability to embed fonts that are not present on the target system.

• 3.x

AdvanceLink (1987) 1 Communications DOS

AdvanceLink is a terminal emulator that integrates with the HP NewWave desktop. It has built in scripting tools and features specifically for communicating with HP 3000, HP 9000, and HP 1000 hosts. It can emulate HP 2392A, HP 700/94, HP 700/92, HP ANSI, and DEC VT100 terminals. It appears a lesser version of this product was bundled with early Vectra computers under the generic name of "HP Terminal Program"

• for DOS

Award Maker Plus (1987) 0 Publishing DOS

AwardMaker, from Baudville, Inc., is a tool for printing nice looking awards and certificates on a dot-matrix printer from a set of about 200 templates. It lacks any print preview, so you must have the manual to know what the templates look like. This is almost identical to Springboard Certificate Maker, however it contains a different set of templates and graphics.

• 1

Calendar Creator Plus (1990) 3 Novelty PIM DOS

Calendar Creator Plus from Vermont Creative Software/Power Up, and later Spinnaker Software, is a tool for creating printed calendars with different styles and custom lists of events.

• 3.x (DOS)

CorelDraw! (1989) 30 Graphics Publishing Unix

Corel Draw is a vector based drawing and illustration program. It is primarily a Windows application, but was ported to Mac OS, Mac OS X, Linux, CTOS and OS/2. It competed against Aldus Freehand, Adobe Illustrator, and Micrografx Designer.

• 3.5 (Unix)

DosFax (1992) 1 Communications DOS

Delrina DosFax is a DOS based program for sending and receiving faxes via a modem that has fax capabilities. This software was often bundled with modems or PCs. It was often accompanied by Delrina WinFax.

• 2.0

Easy Working Desktop Publisher (1992) 0 Publishing DOS

Easy Working Desktop Publisher is a rebranded version of PFS:First Publisher. PFS:First Publisher and the other PFS titles were acquired from Software Publishing Corp by Spinnaker Software in 1991.

• 1.0

Electric Desk (1984) 0 Word Processor Spreadsheet Communications Database DOS

Electric Desk is an all-in-one integrated word processor, spreadsheet, database, and terminal program. It was first introduced in 1984 as a low-overhead office package targeted at the IBM PCjr, and was offered as a lower cost alternative to Ashton-Tate Framework and Lotus Symphony. Electric desk features windowing, macros, and context sensitive menus. The user interface is a little eccentric. It refers to the program components as "services", and refers to windows as "viewports". OEM bundled PC software.

• 1.x

FaxDirect (1994) 1 Communications DOS

FaxDirect is a flexible resident command line tool for sending and receiving FAXes under DOS. It was bundled with copies of WordPefect.

• 2.x

Friday! (1983) 0 PIM Database DOS

Friday! is an early simplified database filing system, sometimes considered a personal information manager, built on top of dBase II. It is easily customizable, completely menu driven, simple, and easy to use. It was targeted at new computer users, and lacks advanced functionally. There were versions for both DOS and CP/M.

• 1.x
• 2.x

GEM Desktop Publisher (1988) 0 Publishing DOS

GEM Desktop Publisher, from Digital Research, is a GEM 3.x based Desktop publishing program. It is not as sophisticated as Ventura Publisher. It uses a VMM (Virtual Memory Manager) in place of EMS/XMS, and requires a hard disk. It can be used with GEM Artline to provide illustrations.

• 2.x

Get Organized (1984) 2 Word Processor Communications PIM DOS

Get Organized is a bare-bones integrated tool that includes a word processor, address book, index card file, notepad, calculator, calendar, and simplistic telecommunications. It was targeted at high end home users and low end business users.

• 1.x

Halo DPE (1987) 0 Graphics Publishing DOS

Halo DPE (Desktop Publishing Editor) was an attempt by Media Cybernetics to enter the desktop publishing market by shoehorning additional text processing abilities in to their Dr. Halo II product.

• 1.x

HyperDOS (1990) 0 Utility PIM DOS

HyperDOS is a simplistic menu shell bundled with Leading Technology PCs and offered as a standalone commercial product. It includes a file manager, built in help, and a number of accessories. It tries to clone the general appearance of the IBM PS/1 shell. Oddly, it starts off in a GUI mode, but all of the tools are text mode programs. Version 2.0 includes the ability to use sound cards.

• 1.x

IBM Classroom LAN Administration System (1990) 0 Utility Communications Education DOS

IBM Classroom LAN Administration System is a set of education oriented network administration utilities. courseware and 400 office utilities. This version requires Novell NetWare 3.12 server.

• 1.x

IBM DisplayComm BSC (1984) 0 Communications DOS

IBM DisplayComm BSC is a Binary Synchronous Communication Program intended for transferring DisplayWrite documents between IBM DisplayWriter systems, IBM PCs, and host computers. It supports data link emulation of an IBM 2770/3780 or 2780 terminal, program automation, batch transfers, and unattended operation.

• 1.x

IBM Enhanced 5250 Emulation Program (1986) 0 Communications DOS

The Enhanced 5250 Emulation Program provides IBM PCs attached to an IBM System/34, System/36, or IBM System/38 the ability to act as a workstation.

• 2.x

IBM SNA 3270 Emulation and RJE Support (1982) 0 Communications DOS

The IBM SNA 3270 Emulation and RJE Support package is a tool that provides SNA/SDLC mainframe communications protocol support so that one may transfer files directly to and from an IBM mainframe. Requires an IBM SDLC network adapter.

• 1.00

Key Form Designer (1989) 0 Publishing DOS

Key Form Designer, from SoftKey Software Products Inc, is an inexpensive tool for quickly producing, filling, and printing professional looking forms.

• 1.x (DOS)

Lotus Agenda (1988) 2 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

Popcorn Desktop (1986) 1 Utility PIM DOS

Popcorn desktop is a set of TSR utilities similar to Borland Sidekick. It includes a text editor, a calculator, and a calendar. It can copy information from currently running programs displayed on the screen.

• 1.x

Prodigy (1988) 0 Communications DOS

Prodigy was an online service that offered on-line news, forums, stock information, games, banking, online shopping, and e-mail. Its primary feature was that it used a fully graphical user interface, however it was limited to very low resolutions and slow dial-up speeds, making it impractical for displaying photographs or detailed graphical documents.

• 2.x

Qmodem (1992) 3 Communications DOS

Qmodem was a friendly, well designed, and feature rich, commercial telecommunications program that was also distributed in shareware form. The first release was in 1984 by John Friel III, and sold to Mustang Software in 1991. During the early years, it competed with PC-Talk. During the later years, it competed with Procomm and Telemate.

• 4.5 (DOS)
• PRO 1.0 (DOS)

Relay Gold (1988) 0 Communications DOS

Relay/PC Gold is a powerful telecommunications program targeted at corporate users. It supports multiple communications sessions, scripting, file transfers, IBM 3270 connectivity, DEC Terminal emulation, and TCP/IP connectivity.

• 3.0

Sidekick (1984) 2 Utility PIM DOS

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.

• 1.x
• Plus
• 2.0