I had a masterful command of Clarisworks 25 years ago. Seems its final form was GoBe Productive, which did have a Windows port, but its IP is hopelessly buried beyond all hope of recovery. Such a pity. But then, I wouldn't have much use for it these days anyway.

I have a small collection of boxed Apps for the 68K and early PPC Mac era plus boxed Apps form the DOS and early Windows 3x era.

One thing I would like to have would be the old engineering apps that required key disks or dongles from the DOS era. Stuff like piping design, CAD, heat exchanger apps etc. I just find that era interesting in how engineers used what would be considered crude utilities to get things made. Vintage speaker design software would be interesting as well.

those details, like knowing the commands of an app inside out, are the ones that fade away sadly. We can use some applications for years then a change of job, new IT comes along, retirement - whatever - and suddenly, almost overnight, all that know how has to be left to one side

old engineering and CAD applications do seem crude compared to today, but were big steps forward back then and it would be great to see them preserved too, well maybe they are and I'm not aware of it

I do like installing Office on my reto rigs,
4.3 for 3x even though I used MS works at the time
97 for Win95 which is what I used right upto 2002
Win98/2k/XP gets 2003 or latest supported (Never liked 2007)

Even though they hardly get used, the fonts, the clipart, its a step back in time. Same as the browser Interface which is why I always install the latest supported version of IE and Win3x also gets Netscape 3
I like old servers as well like the Backoffice suite, I do intend to runup my reto rigs this way one day, even though a image or answer file would be better then limiting yourself to the restrictions of say SMS 1.1 but where is the fun in that?
Other software I'd probably setup to deploy is Acrobat 5/distiller, Cisco VPN (I do have a Pix 501 it could connect to just for fun) Blackberry software? Software that was on just about every office PC in the late 90's

I also want to runup a 2003 SharePoint site with notes on my reto fleet, all running on physical servers of course.
I also have a few old copies of BackupExec (for servers with a tape drive) and PC Anywhere, which I may/maynot setup for Pre XP systems.

I miss Works or somethink like that... a stripped down office suite that had only most essential things and ran on really limited resources.

chinny22 wrote on 2021-04-08, 11:29:

I do like installing Office on my reto rigs, 4.3 for 3x even though I used MS works at the time 97 for Win95 which is what I us […]
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I do like installing Office on my reto rigs,
4.3 for 3x even though I used MS works at the time
97 for Win95 which is what I used right upto 2002
Win98/2k/XP gets 2003 or latest supported (Never liked 2007)

Even though they hardly get used, the fonts, the clipart, its a step back in time. Same as the browser Interface which is why I always install the latest supported version of IE and Win3x also gets Netscape 3
I like old servers as well like the Backoffice suite, I do intend to runup my reto rigs this way one day, even though a image or answer file would be better then limiting yourself to the restrictions of say SMS 1.1 but where is the fun in that?
Other software I'd probably setup to deploy is Acrobat 5/distiller, Cisco VPN (I do have a Pix 501 it could connect to just for fun) Blackberry software? Software that was on just about every office PC in the late 90's

I also want to runup a 2003 SharePoint site with notes on my reto fleet, all running on physical servers of course.
I also have a few old copies of BackupExec (for servers with a tape drive) and PC Anywhere, which I may/maynot setup for Pre XP systems.

yes its a trip down memory lane, as are the carousel of appearing and then disappearing supporting applications that came with various versions of office over the years. I tend to install acrobat reader, IE 6, directx 8 and a couple of other things (like nusb) if its windows 98 for instance, as that has an overall 'updating' affect on the usefulness of the system as well as being a familiar setup for me

i admit to quite liking office 2007 and later, and much as i spent time in earlier versions if i go back now there always seem to be many limitations or things i have become used to that were not there back then

i remember MS Works which at one point seemed to be installed everywhere, it wasn't bad in itself. But then i though the calculator and write.exe were cool in 16 bit windows too!

office 2003 was the best office MS ever made.

I really loved office 2003 with publisher. I used that in highschool through college good times.

I miss WordPerfect, used the DOS version (5.1) back in my college days. The other WP/spreadsheet we used a lot was SAMNA Pro running on AIX. So glad to see the back of that monstrosity. It was hellish even by the standards of the time (don't get me started about the spreadsheet aspect of it just ... just don't).

One obscurity I've not seen since then is an integrated package for DOS called Integrated 7 Advanced (or I7 for short) made by Mosaic I think. Can't find any information about that one anywhere.

These days, I just use Libre for pretty much everything.

i used WordPerfect for DOS too, i remember learning some keyboard shortcuts and becoming quite fast at navigation, I know many GUI applications also have shortcuts (and i used them a lot for Office version too) but those 'peak DOS' office programs had a huge amount and the expectation was that you would learn them. some very early DOS programs gave you very little guidance onscreen too