Arachne is the most popular Internet browser for DOS today. It is graphical, and includes a TCP/IP stack so you’re all ready to go. I recommend this if you have a supported network card, and don’t have Windows installed.

ARC is used to create and maintain file archives. An archive is a group of files collected together into one file in such a way that the individual files may be recovered intact. ARC automatically compresses the files being archived so that the resulting archive takes up a minimum amount of space.

ARJ provides excellent file compression in terms of resulting archive size and speed. It has the option to create multiple volume archives with one command making ARJ useful for making backups to multiple floppies or archiving a very large file to several floppies. It can process and archive up to 32,000 files at one time, and includes a myriad of commands and options to provide ummatched flexibility in archiver usage.

This program is great for managing small budgets. Good for managing multiple budget schemes. Uses extended VGA mode. © Dan Rose

A database program for DOS designed to track your expenses. Has mouse support, pulldown menus, and a toolbar. Can print data as well. © Dan Rose

EZ-NOS is a DOS based webserver that runs on an 8088 and above. It is a standard webserver that can be accessed by any web browser. Just insert a floppy and run the program, it automatically creates a bootable DOS floppy with the webserver on it.

A database program for DOS that stores invoices for use by companies and stockers. There is no mouse support or pulldown menus. © Dan Rose

LHA has better compression rate, especially with large files. There are a few exceptions if using rather small files(Under 1 Kb.). LHA is faster in decompressing, with new static Huffman coding. The speed of compression is not as fast.

This program calculates MD5 hashes for files so you can check for corruption after download.

MindReader is a type-ahead word processor. This software is a powerful text editor that uses patented artificial intelligence techniques to suggest completion of words and/or phrases. This is a fascinating program and is perfect for the slower typist as well as the busy professional.

MVP Paint is an SVGA/VGA graphics workshop. It has many advanced features, such as animation, sunbursting, interpolation, trending, and palette manipulation permitting the use of 262,144 colors. Created as an in-house graphics program by one of the leading shareware games developers, MVP Software, it supports PCX, GIF and VGA file formats.

PKARC can add 3,095 files to an archive in one sweep, and has a special limited-disk-size handling to enable the update of archive files which are larger than 50% of your floppy disk storage area. A List Files feature has been added to further automate the archiving and file reconstruction process. It includes an option which saves time by reconstructing only the most recent version of the file to be extracted when another same-named file already resides on your disk.

PKZip is a DOS based utility in which you can compress and archive files. The most common and obvious use for this utility is to save disk space. Although this is the main reason for the program there are some other not so obvious uses for it. For example, say you have a file or group of files which you need to give to a friend. The selection totals 5 megabytes of space. With PKZip you can make one large zip file span over several disks. This allows you to transport the files to other systems easily. Another important use for compressing files is to speed up transfers between systems. Most ZIP files are universal, i.e., these should unzip most files made in newer versions of WinZip.

RAR is an extremely powerful tool which allows you to manage and control archive files. RAR features include mouse support and menus, non-RAR archive support, a common ‘standard’ command-line interface, and the ability to recover physically damaged archives. It has better compression than other PC tools using ‘solid’ archiving, locking, password, file order list, disk volume labels & more. For the newest version of RAR, visit rarlab.com.

Screen Thief is a screen capture program that will capture the screens other programs cannot reach! Captures directly to .GIF, .PCX, .TIF or .BMP format, supports all VGA modes, plus extended support for Super VGA modes. It will even capture re-defined fonts in text mode (such as those used by DOS 6). Note: this application is not year 2000 compliant.

TeleDisk is a utility which will convert any diskette into a file and vice-versa. The diskette need not be a DOS diskette. The result is an exact copy of the original diskette. The file produced by TeleDisk is compressed to minimal size. You can then transmit this file using your favorite communications program and again use TeleDisk to reconstruct an exact copy of the diskette from that file. No muss, no fuss - and very easy to use. Note: Versions after 2.11 may not work reliably with a 40 track, 360 kByte floppy drive.