Microsoft Plus! (1995) 64 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) 2 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) 4 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) 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 Voice (1996) 1 Utility Windows

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

• 2.0

Microsoft Windows a Vision for the Future (1997) 1 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) 2 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) 3 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) 72 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) 1 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) 2 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) 21 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 Tools (1985) 24 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) 0 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

Policies Now! (1993) 3 Utility Publishing Windows

Policies Now is a document creation wizard that specializes in corporate policies. It provides general purpose templates with carefully constructed language that are customized via a series of questions. The results may be manually customized further with a built in text editor. accompanied by "DescriptionsWrite Now!" (A job description writing tool), and "Personal Policy Expert". These were renamed to "Policies Now!", "Description Now!", and "Policies Now! HR Pro Edition" respectively.

• 5.x

PubTech File Organizer (1989) 0 Utility Publishing Windows

The PubTech File Organizer is an alternate desktop shell for Windows that attempts to mimic the Macintosh Finder. It features drive icons directly on the desktop, a Garbage icon, and folders that open in new cascaded windows with icons representing files. Applications are easily accessible from an "Applications" menu. Files and programs may be placed directly on the File Organizer desktop. In many ways, it is similar to the Windows 95 desktop, but the earlier versions work under Windows 2!

• 2.11
• 3.10

Sidekick (1984) 7 Utility PIM Windows

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.

• 1.0 for Windows
• 2.0 for Windows

Stacker (1991) 7 Utility Archive DOS Windows

Stacker, from Stack Electronics, was a hard drive compression tool. It was wildly popular until Microsoft virtually eliminated the third party market for this by including their own drive compression tool with MS-DOS 6. and Expandz! Plus.

• 4.0 (DOS)

Statistica (1993) 1 Utility Windows

StatSoft Statistica provides data analysis, data management, statistics, data mining, and data visualization procedures.

• 4.x

Talking Icons (1994) 0 Novelty Windows

Talking Icons 2.0 is a utility from Aristo-Soft for Windows 3.1 that adds silly sounds and animated icons to the Windows environment. It also features a tool (Windows FX) that changes the windows border with multiple themes, additional screen savers, wallpaper, additional mouse cursors, an icon editor, and "Talk" ready versions of Minesweeper, Solitaire, and Clock.

• 2.0

The All-Star Utilities Pac (1992) 0 Utility Other Windows

The All-Star Utilities Pac is a set of small windows-based productivity utilities. It was a freebie given away by PC Magazine.

• 1.0