IBM PS2 Collegiate Kit (1987) 0 Utility DOS Windows

The IBM PS2 Collegiate Kit is a set of floppy disks that contain a system tutorial and a runtime of Windows 1.04 with a PS/2 mouse driver. It was included with some PS/2 machines as an educational promotional deal.

• 1.00

Key Form Designer (1989) 1 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)

Key Publisher (1991) 2 Publishing DOS

Key Publisher is a GEM based desktop publishing tool. This is a rebranded version of GST Software's Publish-It.

• 1.x

Landmark Service Diagnostics (1992) 1 Utility DOS

Landmark Service Diagnostics is a set of professional, exhaustive diagnostic tool for testing all aspects of IBM PC 8088, 286, 386, and 486 compatible computer systems. It includes hundreds of powerful and flexible tests that check motherboards, RAM, video, COM ports, floppy drives, hard drives, and printers.

• 2.x

MenuWorks (1988) 7 Utility DOS

Menu Works, from PC Dynamics, Inc, is a DOS based menu program that lets you boot your computer to a friendly menu of options rather than a confounding DOS prompt. It supports mice, features custom menu creation, sub menus, automatic scanning for known programs on your hard drive, on-line help, built in file management, and a built in file search function.

• 2.x
• Advanced 2.0

MyBackup (1991) 1 Utility DOS

MyBackup was a low-end, low cost budget title that featured a simplistic, no-frills, easy to use backup utility. It can perform full backups, or backups of selected files. There were versions for DOS and Windows. Presumably based on Finot KeepTrack Plus.

• 1.x (DOS)

MyLabelMaker (1988) 1 Publishing DOS

MyLabelMaker is a low-end budget title that aids in making labels using your printer. It is the perfect way print cards for your Rolodex, or labels for your audio cassettes!

• 1.x

Norton Backup (1990) 3 Utility DOS

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.

• 1.x
• 2.x

Norton Desktop (1991) 18 Utility DOS

Norton Desktop is a powerful desktop shell and file manager bundled with many additional tools. There are versions for both DOS and Microsoft Windows.

• 1.0 for DOS

Packard Bell Navigator (1993) 4 Utility Other DOS

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.

• 3.5

PC-Fullbak (1988) 3 Utility DOS

PC-Fullbak was a small low-cost hard drive backup program that aggressively competed head-on against Fifth Generation Systems Fastback. It was comparatively speedy, and supported appending to existing backups. under the name "PC-FullbakEZ". There were also versions for the Macintosh.

• 2.x

Perks (1987) 2 Utility PIM DOS

Perks-PC is a set of terminate-and-stay-resident utilities originally designed for the Zenith Z-100 and optimized for use on laptop computers. It features a notepad, typewriter tool, a four-function calculator, appointment calendar, card file, a rudimentary telecommunications program with file transfer abilities, and alarm clock. Notably, it claims to support all versions of DOS including DOS 1.x.

• 2.x

PKZip (1990) 17 Utility DOS

Pkzip is the most common archiver for MS-DOS based systems. It implements a an open compression method and is much faster than other archivers of its time.

• 1.x
• 2.0x

PolyWindows DeskPlus (1985) 1 Utility DOS

PolyWindows DeskPlus is a collection of memory resident accessories for DOS. It was first released in 1984 by POLYTRON Corporation. It includes an editor, index cards, a calendar/appointment book, an alarm clock, several calculators, a phone dialer, DOS functions, keyboard macros, and can cut-and-paste between applications. HQ, Mastro, PC Desk, Pop-Up Desk Set, and WordPerfect Library.

• 1.2

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

Prokey (1989) 0 Utility DOS

Prokey is a DOS TSR macro recording and playback program. It adds lotus-style menus to applications, lets users create their own help messages, can copy text from the screen, remembers the last 300 keystrokes, and supports timed reminder alerts.

• 5.x

QuarkXPress (1986) 22 Publishing DOS

QuarkXPress was THE standard publishing software during the 1990s. However it failed to update its product line to newer technologies in a timely manager, charged insane amounts for updates or additional features that should have been built in to the software, and became very abusive to their customers. Later versions required a parallel port/ADB copy protection dongle. They lost most of their market share to Adobe InDesign.

• 3.x

Quarterdeck GameRunner (1995) 3 Utility DOS

Quarterdeck GameRunner, from Quarterdeck Corporation, is a specialized packaging of their QEMM memory management product that is specifically designed to automatically maximize the memory and speed available to known games. DOS based games of the time used a hodgepodge of memory access methods, that varied from product to product and often created conflicts. GameRunner attempts to mitigate some of this chaos by providing automatic configuration and management.

• 2.x

Quarterdeck Manifest (1988) 0 Utility DOS

Manifest is an easy to use diagnostic program that provides incredibly detailed information about DOS resource usage, loaded programs, IO devices, and memory usage including EMS, XMS, and UMB memory. It was available as a standalone program and bundled with QEMM and Deskview. Tools like this were essential for resolving compatibility problems between poorly behaved DOS programs and highly customized environments, especially in task switched or multitasking environments.

• 1.x

QuickMenu (1991) 1 Utility DOS

QuikMenu III is an icon-based graphical menu and desktop for DOS.

• 1.x

Sidekick (1984) 14 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

SitBack (1991) 0 Utility DOS

SitBack is a unique backup tool that backs up files in the background while users are using their systems. This is based on the reality that most users do not want to take the time or effort to manually back up their work. SitBack can backup up to local drives or network shares, and can back up from many kinds of media.

• 3.x

SoftLogic Disk Optimizer (1987) 0 Utility DOS

Disk Optimizer, from SoftLogic Solutions Inc., was a low cost disk defragmentation utility that competed directly against the Norton Utilities. Like other disk optimizers, it re-arranges where files are stored on a hard drive to decrease file access time. It was, however, not as full featured or robust as the Norton Utilities.

• 2.x

Springboard Certificate Maker (1986) 2 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

Stacker (1991) 10 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.

• 1.0 (DOS)
• 2.0 (DOS)
• 3.x (DOS)
• 4.0 (DOS)