Microsoft GIF Animator (1997) 3 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 Greetings (1997) 6 Publishing Novelty Windows

Microsoft Greetings is a greeting card maker for Microsoft Windows 9x/NT. It was made in conjunction with Hallmark.

• Workshop 2.0
• 99 (3.0)

Microsoft Musical Instruments (1994) 4 Reference Novelty Windows

Microsoft Musical Instruments is a multimedia CD ROM encyclopedia of musical instruments from around the world. Part of the Microsoft Home family of multimedia products.

• 1.x

Microsoft Office Manager (1993) 1 Utility Windows

Microsoft Office Manager contains the Office Toolbar, several toolbar tools, and Cue Cards. This is for use with independently packaged applications from the Microsoft Office suite.

• 3.5
• 4.0
• 4.2

Microsoft Plus! (1995) 101 Utility Novelty Windows

Microsoft Plus! was an add-on package to Windows that added desktop themes, screen savers, sound effects, power-toys, and other assorted goodies for the home user. Plus! 95 also included Internet Explorer 1.0, which was not included in all Windows 95 distributions.

• 95
• 98

Microsoft Saturn Screensaver (1995) 0 Novelty Windows

The Microsoft "Saturn" screen saver is a plasma-like screen saver that uses 256-color VGA pallet rotation to create dazzling effects.

• 1

Microsoft Scenes (1993) 6 Novelty Windows

Microsoft Scenes is a screen saver that displays a slide show of photographs. It was packaged in several varieties with different themed galleries.

• 1.0
• 2.0

Microsoft SoundBits (1992) 0 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 Voice (1996) 0 Utility Windows

Microsoft Voice is a voice recognition system for Microsoft Windows 95/NT.

• 2.0

Microsoft Windows a Vision for the Future (1997) 2 Novelty Document Windows

This is a promotional collection of documents in HTML format released in 1997 describing Microsoft's upcoming plans for future versions of Windows.

• 1997

Microsoft Word Assistant (1993) 0 Utility Windows

Microsoft Word Assistant contains a font manager, additional TrueType fonts, additional templates, and clipart. Requires Microsoft Word 6.0.

• 1.0

Monarch (1992) 0 Utility Windows

Monarch is an easy to use business tool that extracts data from printed reports and mainframe data files that you can then import in to tools like Lotus 1-2-3 or Excel. Printed reports files are not always formatted in a consistent fashion - they are formatted for people to read, not machines. But this tool makes sorting through all of that easy.

• 2.x (Win)
• 3.x (Win)

Multimedia Cats (1995) 0 Reference Novelty Windows

A multimedia database, from Inroads Interactive, about all kinds of cats from all around the world. In the event of an Internet apocalypse, all you will need is this CD and a CD of cartoon farting clips.

• 1.0

Norton Backup (1990) 0 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)

Norton Commander (1986) 118 Utility Windows

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 (Win)
• 2.x (Win)

Norton Crash Guard (1997) 0 Utility Windows

Crash Guard is a tool that prevents misbehaving application programs from completely freezing the Windows user interface, in some cases can "unfreeze" a program, and recover the data you were working with. Crash Guard Deluxe also includes a number of additional tools to help improve the stability of a Windows system. This includes a system checker, virus scanner, hard drive integrity scanner, disk optimizer, software updater, registry scanner, and disk space manager.

• 3.x

Packard Bell Navigator (1993) 9 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

Parsons Atomic Clock (1999) 0 Utility Windows

Parsons Atomic Clock is a fancy utility for synchronizing your computers clock with a time server, either via modem or to an internet time server. Features include an audio spoken clock, time drift estimates, daytime map, lunar phase events, and customizable time counters.

• 5.0

PartitionMagic (1995) 39 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
• 5.x
• 6.0
• 7.x

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 Paint (1984) 2 Graphics Windows

PC Paint, from Mouse Systems Corporation, is a Macintosh MacPaint-like paint program for the PC. It was often bundled with Mouse Systems mice. Despite the similar sounding name and appearance, it is NOT related to Microsoft/ZSoft PC Paintbrush.

• 3.x

PC Paintbrush (1984) 33 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)

PC Tools (1985) 48 Utility Windows

PC Tools, from Central Point Software, is a system and disk utility suite similar to the Norton Utilities. Central Point also produced a similar set of tools for the Apple Macintosh known as MacTools. Central Point Backup, bundled as part of PC-Tools, was also offered as a standalone product.

• 2.0 for Windows

PC-Tools File Manager (1994) 3 Utility Windows

This is a standalone version of the enhanced filemanager that was bundled with PC-Tools for Windows. This version was released after Symantec acquired Central Point and discontinued the PC-Tools product.

• 3.0

PerfectOffice (1995) 1 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Graphics Database Windows

PerfectOffice is a bundle of office applications that competed head on with Microsoft Office.It bundles WordPerfect and a number of other office applications. This bundle started out as "Borland Office", was briefly known as "Novell PerfectOffice", then "Corel Office", and under Corel it later became "WordPerfect Office". (Not to be confused with the unrelated ~1990 groupware program, also called "WordPerfect Office")

• 3.0