# Favorite old pieces of software (not games) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 2, 2021, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059 "2021-02-02T15:34:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2021, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/61 "2021-02-03T23:06:15Z")
I can’t be the only one who used Cinemania. I still have the discs for a couple of the releases. I remember downloading additional content monthly to keep it current. [https://imgur.com/ItOZ7w9](https://imgur.com/ItOZ7w9) ---
**Author:** ![TheCuse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thecuse/32/2854_2.png) [@TheCuse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheCuse)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2021, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/62 "2021-02-03T23:08:37Z")
> [@jaycat](#): > > That’s quite interesting. I thought it was long gone. The weekly paper where I now work uses InDesign, but at this point I’m just a lowly proofreader, so it doesn’t concern me so much. The world needs proofreaders! I’m in book publishing and I do a lot of original pagination (and designing what the designer doesn’t design). Our in-house proofreaders do it all electronically via PDF nowadays. Used to do it on printed files, but we’ve gone pretty much paperless. How about you? ---
**Author:** ![Yosh99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ccd318/32.png) [@Yosh99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yosh99)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2021, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/63 "2021-02-03T23:23:04Z")
Spellbinder, Turbo Pascal, Lotus and dBase all bring back fond memories. I honestly don’t think desktop computer productivity has improved all that much since these early DOS applications although Spellbinder was admittedly a crude word processing program that could never compete with WordPerfect. ---
**Author:** ![leswax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@leswax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leswax)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/64 "2021-02-04T00:10:57Z")
Flying Toasters from After Dark around 1994 was a joy to watch. Also Kai Power Tool’s Bryce fractal-based landscape generating program. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/65 "2021-02-04T00:19:07Z")
Here’s an obscure one: James Gleick’s CHAOS: > **[GitHub - rudyrucker/chaos: James Gleick's Chaos: The Software](https://github.com/rudyrucker/chaos)** > > James Gleick's Chaos: The Software. Contribute to rudyrucker/chaos development by creating an account on GitHub. Mandelbrot sets, strange attractors, all sorts of neat stuff. Probably got me interested in complex numbers, too, since you need them for many fractals. ---
**Author:** ![jaycat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat/32/3015_2.png) [@jaycat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jaycat)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/66 "2021-02-04T02:16:33Z")
Well, we were doing it in-house, at the office, til this Covid thing came along. Now I sit on my sofa and peruse the PDFs. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/67 "2021-02-04T02:20:22Z")
> [@leswax](#): > > Flying Toasters from After Dark around 1994 was a joy to watch. Oooh, that reminded me! Back in those days, I had a program called Whoop It Up, that let you assign sound files to various system functions (startup, shutdown, etc.), at a time before Win 3.1 let you easily do that. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/68 "2021-02-04T06:08:10Z")
I still use **ACDSee 2.41** as well. I haven’t upgraded to Win10 yet and it was one of the apps I was most worried about when I do, but it seems that you’re saying it’s fine, so that’s reassuring. The graphics app I used in the 90s was **Deluxe Paint IV** for the Commodore Amiga. It was very simple and limited, but I made loads of what I thought was very competent art with it, pixel by pixel, and I miss its simplicity sometimes. Of course, if I had kept any of the art as a gif or iff or whatever they were, it would be such a tiny little square, as the resolution was only VGA, 640x512 at best, and sometimes only 320x256 pixels. [![](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/zw0tzbou3ofsmiu/320x256.png?dl=0) ](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/zw0tzbou3ofsmiu/320x256.png?dl=0) ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/69 "2021-02-04T06:14:21Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > The graphics app I used in the 90s was **Deluxe Paint IV** for the Commodore Amiga. [Deluxe Paint Animation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluxe_Paint_Animation) was also fun (and based on the Amiga version). I used it for a few video projects in high school. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/70 "2021-02-04T06:22:30Z")
> [@leswax](#): > > Flying Toasters from After Dark around 1994 was a joy to watch. Ah, the memories! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/71 "2021-02-04T06:48:31Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > If anyone has a morbid curiosity about Microsoft Bob, it’s available for download **[here](https://winworldpc.com/product/microsoft-bob/100a)**. The site also has a series of screenshots. Even the specially customized Gateway version is available. It’s nominally for Windows 3.1 so not sure what it will run on, but I might give it a try with Windows XP which I have running in a VM. I would not risk trying to install it in a real OS. Hah! It installed just fine in Win XP running in a VM! Haven’t really played with it much, but it seems to work. 😀 ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/72 "2021-02-04T07:29:56Z")
Another obscure one: Brøderbund’s _The Toy Shop_: > **[December 2007 – Paper Modeling With The Toy Shop](https://mikeandlace.wordpress.com/2007/12/)** > > 1 post published by laceyjaye22 during December 2007 I had this for the Commodore 64 as a kid. The box came with adhesive cardstock, dowels, wire, and other bits. You print out the models on paper, stick them to the cardstock, then cut them out and assemble. I remember that the printer I had at the time had a weird distortion and all the circles came out as ellipses. The models didn’t work too well in that case, but eventually I got access to a better printer (24-pin dot matrix instead of 9-pin!). The catapult was my favorite model and worked well. The steam engine was also cool but I never got it working all that well (just a little too fiddly, especially since I was under 10). Arguably, it was kinda pointless as a piece of software, since they could have just included high quality printouts of the models for basically no cost. But there was something nice about picking and printing the models yourself. So I have fond memories of it. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/73 "2021-02-04T08:12:39Z")
i remeber when the pc companies were trying to get people used to windows with all sorts of strange front ends … my favorite was compaqs which was a simple folder and each page had a tab you could assign programs to ---
**Author:** ![Brayne\_Ded](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Brayne\_Ded](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brayne_Ded)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/74 "2021-02-04T09:06:22Z")
Norton Commander. For 99% of what I do, I think it would still be easier and faster than Windows. I used it a lot and loved it. Servant Salamander is the same thing in Windows, and I use that. Norton also had NCD, which was great for moving around directory structures. Nobody has made a Windows equivalent that i know of. I still use a DOS database called Q&A, from Symantec.It is a flat file DB, of course, but in my experience that is all I need. It is relatively easy to program and, above all, to generate reports. By contrast, MS Access is a pain to generate reports, and while I use it, this is mainly only as a address database for mail merge. However, I have been trying to replace Q&A for some time, as it is essentially my accounting program. ---
**Author:** ![Brayne\_Ded](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Brayne\_Ded](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brayne_Ded)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 9:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/75 "2021-02-04T09:09:35Z")
" I used to like **Lotus Approach** for my client database." I used it a little. Nice program, quite easy to use, pity that Access swamped it. ---
**Author:** ![Bonum\_Legatum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bonum_legatum/32/6183_2.png) [@Bonum\_Legatum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bonum_Legatum)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/76 "2021-02-04T09:54:14Z")
Minor hijack - Favorite software company name: THINKERTOYS. **Dr. Strangelove:** Your description of Toy Shop was so interesting that I searched… > **[Toy Shop, The : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Toy_Shop_The_1986)** > > Also ForApple II, Commodore 64, MacintoshDeveloped byActive Arts, Inc., Brøderbund Software, Inc.Published byBrøderbund Software,... ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/77 "2021-02-04T10:04:16Z")
> [@Brayne\_Ded](#): > > Norton Commander. I see there is a [modern version of NC for Win 10](https://www.winnc.com/).   Personally, I find that [XYplorer](https://www.xyplorer.com/product.php#overview/) is by far the best file manager I’ve ever used. It’s highly customizable, so you can set it up and use it exactly the way you want to. It has umpteen well-designed features, but the ‘killer’ feature is their [Mini Tree](https://www.xyplorer.com/highlights.php#minitree). This is a folder tree that shows only the folders you have actually used. You can still easily access any folder or sub-tree, but leaving the rarely used folders hidden is a huge improvement for ease of use. They also offer a [free version](https://www.xyplorer.com/free.php), though it’s no longer maintained. It’s more than adequate for most purposes. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/78 "2021-02-04T10:08:45Z")
> [@Bonum\_Legatum](#): > > **Dr. Strangelove:** Your description of Toy Shop was so interesting that I searched Neat! I actually looked on [archive.org](http://archive.org) for it but couldn’t find it. Maybe I had limited it to the C64 or something; that version looks to be for DOS. Same deal, though. I’d forgotten that you could customize the models with decals and patterns. That better justifies it as a software package. I wonder if some of those models are still at my parent’s place. It was nice thick cardstock, so if you were careful you actually ended up with a pretty durable item. ---
**Author:** ![Brayne\_Ded](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Brayne\_Ded](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brayne_Ded)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/79 "2021-02-04T10:53:42Z")
Many thanx for the info. WinNC is a couple of decades too late, I have used Salamander for a long time. But XYplorer looks like a better program, I’ll give it a try. I used to use Ventura Publisher a lot. AFAIK, I could still run it, but I don’t have a need for a DTP program now. Most of the texts I get are in Word format, and everybody uses Word for documentation. Which is silly, as VP could do the same, only better, and with much smaller files. As for DTP, I own PageMaker 8.0 and FrameMaker 7.0, but have not used either for many years, I just do not need them now. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2021, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059/80 "2021-02-04T12:04:04Z")
I have used all the Wordstar, Wordperfect, InDesign (I tried using Word but quickly gave up on it), but for DTP, like for generating long books or even basic articles, there is something to be said for the TeX/LaTeX/ConTeXt family, bringing high-quality typesetting capabilities to the masses since the early 1980s, in the public domain, no less. POV-RAY was useful a couple of times for rendering complicated surfaces defined by algebraic equations (you can describe surfaces defined by an arbitrary continuous function). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-old-pieces-of-software-not-games/932059.md?page=5)