IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. The term "IBM PC compatible" is now a historical description only, since IBM no longer sells personal computers after it sold its personal computer division in 2005 to Chinese technology company Lenovo. The designation "PC", as used in much of personal computer history, has not meant "personal computer" generally, but rather an x86 computer capable of running the same software that a contemporary IBM PC could. The term was initially in contrast to the variety of home computer systems available in the early 1980s, such as the Apple II, TRS-80, and Commodore 64. Later, the term was primarily used in contrast to Apple's Macintosh computers.
Lotus Software was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was "offloaded" to India's HCL Technologies in 2018.
Gen Digital Inc. is a multinational software company co-headquartered in Tempe, Arizona and Prague, Czech Republic. The company provides cybersecurity software and services. Gen is a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500 stock-market index. The company also has development centers in Pune, Chennai and Bangalore. Its portfolio includes Norton, Avast, LifeLock, Avira, AVG, ReputationDefender, and CCleaner.
Peter Norton is an American programmer, software publisher, author, and philanthropist. He is best known for the computer programs and books that bear his name and portrait. Norton sold his software business to Symantec Corporation in 1990.
Quarterdeck Office Systems, later Quarterdeck Corporation, was an American computer software company. It was founded by Therese Myers and Gary Pope in 1981 and incorporated in 1982. Their offices were initially located at 150 Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica, California and later at 13160 Mindanao Way in Marina del Rey, California, as well as a sales and technical support unit located in Clearwater, Florida. In the 1990s, they had a European office in Dublin, Ireland. Their most famous products were the Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager, DESQview, CleanSweep, DESQview/X, Quarterdeck Mosaic, Manifest and Partition-It.
Norton Commander (NC) is a discontinued prototypical orthodox file manager (OFM), written by John Socha and released by Peter Norton Computing. NC provides a text-based user interface for managing files on top of MS-DOS. It was officially produced between 1986 and 1998. The last MS-DOS version of Norton Commander, 5.51, was released on July 1, 1998.
Norton AntiVirus is an anti-virus or anti-malware software product founded by Peter Norton, developed and distributed by Symantec since 1990 as part of its Norton family of computer security products. It uses signatures and heuristics to identify viruses. Other features included in it are e-mail spam filtering and phishing protection.
Norton Utilities is a utility software suite designed to help analyze, configure, optimize and maintain a computer. The latest version of the original series of Norton Utilities is Norton Utilities 16 for Windows XP/Vista/7/8 was released 26 October 2012.
PC Tools is a collection of software utilities for DOS developed by Central Point Software.
John Socha-Leialoha is a software developer best known for creating Norton Commander, the first orthodox file manager. The original Norton Commander was written for DOS. Over the years, Socha's design for file management has been extended and cloned many times.
Norton SystemWorks is a discontinued utility software suite by Symantec Corp. It integrates three of Symantec's most popular products – Norton Utilities, Norton CrashGuard and Norton AntiVirus – into one program designed to simplify solving common PC issues. Backup software was added later to high-end editions. SystemWorks was innovative in that it combined several applications into an all-in-one software for managing computer health, thus saving significant costs and time often spent on using different unrelated programs. SystemWorks, which was introduced in 1998 has since inspired a host of competitors such as iolo System Mechanic, McAfee Nuts And Bolts, Badosoft First Aid and many others.
Quest Development Corporation was a small, privately held software development company founded by serial entrepreneur Kevin Azzouz in San Luis Obispo, California that primarily developed backup and storage management software which was licensed as The Norton Backup to Symantec Corporation in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Formed in Azzouz's condominium apartment just before the heyday of technology company mergers and acquisitions during the 1990s, the original Quest operation became part of Astora Software, Arcada Software, Seagate Software, Veritas Software and Symantec.
Norton Guides were a product family sold by Peter Norton Computing. The guides were written in 1985 by Warren Woodford for the x86 Assembly Language, C, BASIC, and Forth languages and made available to DOS users via a terminate-and-stay-resident (TSR) program that integrated with programming language editors on IBM PC type computers.
Central Point Software, Inc. was a leading software utilities maker for the PC market, supplying utilities software for the DOS and Microsoft Windows markets. It also made Apple II copy programs. Through a series of mergers, the company was ultimately acquired by Symantec in 1994.
FastBack is a software application developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s for backing up IBM PC and Macintosh computers. It was originally written by Fifth Generation Systems, a company located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. When the company wanted to expand into the Apple market they purchased and rebranded a product from TouchStone Software Corporation.
PC Tools, formerly known as WinGuides.com, was a software company acquired by Symantec in 2008; the new owner eventually discontinued the PC Tools name. Company headquarters were in Australia, with offices in Luxembourg, the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland and Ukraine. The company had previously developed and distributed security and optimization software for the Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows platforms.
Fifth Generation Systems, Inc., was a computer security company founded October 1984 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States by Robert Mitchell, Leroy Mitchell, Roger Ivey, and Bruce Ray. All four later left the company. Fifth Generation's initial commercial product was FastBack, the first practical hard disk backup program for the IBM PC.
Software Publishing Corporation (SPC) was a Mountain View, California-based manufacturer of business software, originally well known for its "pfs:" series of business software products, it was ultimately best known for its pioneering Harvard Graphics business and presentation graphics program.
Norton, formerly known as Norton by Symantec, is a brand of Gen Digital based in Tempe, Arizona. Since being acquired by the Symantec Corporation in 1990, Norton offers a variety of products and services related to digital security, identity protection, and online privacy. In 2014, Norton's parent company Symantec separated their business into two units. One was focused on security and the other was focused on information management; Norton was placed in the unit focused on security. The company originally provided utility software for DOS.
