Adobe Acrobat (1993) 38 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

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) 1 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)

Checks And Balances (1986) 0 Financial DOS

Checks & Balances, by California Digital Engineering, is a fast, powerful, and flexible home accounting package for the IBM PC. It Manages checking, savings, and credit accounts, and prints checks.

• 4.0

CorelDraw! (1989) 36 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)

DacEasy Accounting (1987) 6 Financial DOS

DacEasy was the first company to offer affordable accounting software geared towards the small business. It was first released in 1985 and had gone through many DOS revisions at the time the Windows version was released.

• 2.0 (DOS)
• 4.x (DOS)

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

Fidelity On line Xpress (1992) 0 Financial DOS

Fidelity On line Xpress is an application that enables Fidelity customers to make trades and update their portfolios online.

• 2.0

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) 0 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 Accounting Assistant Series - Inventory Control & Purchasing Edition (1985) 0 Financial DOS

The IBM Accounting Assistant Series is a set of accounting and management tools. The series is made up of different modules or "editions". The Accounting Assistant Series targeted small to medium sized businesses, while IBM's "Business Adviser" series targeted large businesses. entries, generating invoices and purchase orders, and producing special reports. Information can be shared with General Accounting, Accounts Receivable & Billing, and Accounts Payable Editions.

• 1.0

IBM Business Adviser (1986) 0 Financial DOS

Business Adviser is a high-end modular accounting and business management program targeted at large businesses. It was written by BPI for IBM, but is not simply a rebranded BPI product. Inventory Control keeps track of inventory in warehouses supporting different costing methods and generates purchase orders and reports.

• 1.0

IBM Home Budget Jr (1983) 0 Financial DOS

This is a small easy to use home budgeting program optimized for the 128k IBM PCjr. It also supports the IBM PC and XT. Part of the IBM Personal/Home Series.

• 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

MasterModeller (1984) 0 Financial DOS

MasterModeller is a model-designing program. With it, you design financial models that enable you to analyze your figures, produce forecasts, and test the effects of decisions. You can set up as many models as you like, sort them all on disk, and use them whenever you need to.

• 2.x

Microsoft Multi-Tool Budget (1983) 0 Financial DOS

Microsoft Multi-Tool Budget is an easy to understand and easy to use tool that will guide you through developing accurate and reliable operating budgets for your business. It was one of several "Expert Systems" packaged by Microsoft for use with Microsoft Multiplan. The others included Microsoft Cash Plan, and Microsoft Financial Statement.

• 1.0

Popcorn Desktop (1986) 2 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

Sidekick (1984) 6 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

Springboard Certificate Maker (1986) 0 Publishing DOS

Certificate Maker, from Springboard, is a fun little program for printing a variety of styled certificates on your dot-matrix printer. You must refer to the manual to see what the templates look like, as it provides no on screen preview. Award Maker seems to be an offshoot of this product.

• 1

Springboard The Newsroom (1985) 1 Publishing DOS

"The Newsroom" is a very simplified desktop publishing program aimed at novices and children. It uses a simplified step-by-step interface similar to the original "The Print Shop", and bundles a variety of fun clipart images. requires a PC or PCJr with one floppy drive, CGA, and 128K of ram. Additionally, there were versions for the Apple II, and Commodore 64. transfer documents between any two instances of The Newsroom, even between the IBM/Apple/C64 platforms.

• 1985
• Pro 1989

StepWay Desktop Publisher (1994) 0 Graphics Publishing DOS

StepWay Desktop Publisher is a very low-end budget graphics editor and desktop publisher for DOS. It appears to have been targeted at new computer users and educational markets. The StepWay software is considered "modular", with additional functionality added in separate modules, sold separately. The separate modules they sold included Desktop Publisher, Art Shop, To Do List, Checkbook, Banner, Cookbook, Home Inventory, Greeting Cards, Mail List, and Calendar.

• 1.x