Central Point Software, Inc. (CP, CPS, Central Point) was a leading software utilities maker for the PC market, supplying utilities software for the

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

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.

History

CPS was founded by Michael Burmeister-Brown (Mike Brown) in 1980 in Central Point, Oregon, for which the company was named. Building on the success of its Copy II PC backup utility, it moved to Beaverton, Oregon. In 1993 CPS acquired the XTree Company. It was itself acquired by Symantec in 1994, for around $60 million.

Products

The company's most important early product was a series of utilities which allowed exact duplicates to be made of copy-protected

diskette A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined wi ...

s. The first version, Copy II Plus v1.0 (for the Apple II), was released in June 1981. With the success of the IBM PC and compatibles, a version for that platform - ''Copy II PC'' (copy2pc) - was released in 1983. CPS also offered a hardware add-in expansion card, the ''Copy II PC Deluxe Board'', which was bundled with its own software. The Copy II PC Deluxe Board was able to read, write and copy disks from Apple II and Macintosh computer systems as well. COPY II PC's main competitor was Quaid Software's ''CopyWrite'', which did not have a hardware component. CPS also released Option Board hardware with TransCopy software for duplicating copy-protected floppy diskettes. tp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/OptionBoard/Option%20Board%20Archive%20Notes.html Option Board archive questions and answers./ref> In 1985 CPS released PC Tools, an integrated graphical DOS shell and utilities package. PC Tools was an instant success and became Central Point's flagship product, and positioned the company as the major competitor to

Peter Norton Computing Peter Norton Computing, Inc., was a software company founded by Peter Norton. The first and best known software package it produced was Norton Utilities. Another successful software package was Norton Commander, especially the DOS version. In 1990 ...

and its

Norton Utilities 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 Oc ...

and

Norton Commander Norton Commander (NC) is a discontinued prototypical orthodox file manager (OFM), written by John Socha and released by Peter Norton Computing (later acquired in 1990 by the Symantec corporation). NC provides a text-based user interface for ...

. CPS later manufactured a Macintosh version called ''Mac Tools''. CPS licensed the Mirror, Undelete, and Unformat components of PC Tools to

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

for inclusion in MS-DOS versions 5.x and 6.x as external DOS utilities. CPS File Manager was ahead of its time, with features such as view ZIP archives as directories and a file/picture viewer. In 1993 CPS released PC Tools for Windows 2.0 which ran on Windows 3.1. After the Symantec acquisition the programmer group that created PCTW 2.0 created Norton Navigator for Windows 95 and Symantec unbundled the File Manager used in PCTW 2.0 and released it as PC-Tools File Manager 3.0 for Windows 3.1 The lateness of PCTW to the Windows market was a major factor in why CPS was acquired by Symantec. Windows Server at the time was not viewed as a credible alternative to Novell NetWare - the first version of Windows Server was released in 1993 - and the desktop and server software products market was completely centered on Novell NetWare. The subsequent stumble by Novell to maintain dominance in the server market came years later and had nothing to do with the acquisition. Instead, like many software vendors, CPS underestimated how rapidly users were going to shift to Windows from DOS. CPS's other major desktop product was Central Point Anti-Virus (CPAV), whose main competitor was

Norton Antivirus Norton AntiVirus is an anti-virus or anti-malware software product founded by Peter Norton, developed and distributed by Gen Digital since 1990 as part of its Norton family of computer security products. It uses signatures and heuristics to i ...

. CPAV was a licensed version of ''Carmel Softwares ''Turbo Anti-Virus''; CPS, in turn, licensed CPAV to Microsoft to create Microsoft Antivirus for DOS (MSAV) and Windows (MWAV). CPS also released CPAV for Netware 3.xx and 4.x Netware servers in 1993. Central Point also sold the

Apple II clone The Apple II home computer series was frequently cloned, both in the United States and abroad, in a similar way to the IBM PC. According to some sources (see below), more than 190 different models of Apple II clones were manufactured. Most could ...

Laser 128 The Laser 128 is an Apple II clone, released by VTech in 1986 and comparable to the Apple IIe and Apple IIc. Description VTech Laser 128 has 128 kB of RAM. Like the Apple IIc, it is a one-piece semi-portable design with a carrying handle ...

by mail.

List of CPS products

* '' PC Tools'' * ''PC Tools for Windows'' * ''Central Point Anti-Virus'' * ''Central Point Anti-Virus for NetWare'' * ''Central Point Backup'' * ''Central Point Desktop'' * ''Central Point Commute'' * ''Copy II+'' * ''Copy II 64'' (for Commodore 64/128) * ''Copy II PC'' * ''Copy II Mac'' * ''Copy II ST'' (for Atari ST/TT series computers) * ''MacTools'' and ''MacTools Pro'' * ''More PC Tools'' * ''

LANlord LANlord was a DOS, Windows, and OS/2 workstation management system originally developed by Client Server Technologies Group, which got seed funding from Microcom who ultimately later sold the LANlord group in February 1994 to Central Point Softwa ...

'' * ''Deluxe Option Board''

References

{{Authority control Defunct software companies of the United States Defunct companies based in Oregon Software companies established in 1980 Software companies disestablished in 1994 Gen Digital acquisitions Central Point, Oregon 1980 establishments in Oregon 1994 disestablishments in Oregon

History

Products

List of CPS products

See also

References