Central Point Software Inc.(CP, CPS, Central Point) developed software utilities primarily for DOS and Microsoft Windows. It also made Apple II copy programs. It was founded by Michael Burmeister-Brown (Mike Brown) in 1980 in Central Point, Oregon then moved to Beaverton, Oregon.

Early success was with its Copy II PC backup utility, a series of utilities which allowed exact duplicates to be made of copy-protected diskettes. The first version, Copy II Plus v1.0  for the Apple II, was released in June 1981 and a version, Copy II PC (copy2pc) 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, and was able to read, write and copy disks from Apple II and Apple Macintosh. COPY II PC's main competitor was

Quaid Software's CopyWrite, which did not have a hardware. CPS also released Option Board hardware with TransCopy software for duplicating copy-protected floppy diskettes.

PC Tools, an integrated graphical DOS shell and utilities package was released in 1985 and  based on its success became the flagship product, with Norton Utilities and Norton Commander as the main competitive products. The Apple Macintosh version was  called Mac Tools.

In 1990 Symantec acquired Norton and its products.

CPS licensed the Mirror, Undelete, and Unformat components of PC Tools was  to Microsoft 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.

Central Point Anti-Virus (CPAV), was a licensed version of Carmel Software's Turbo Anti-Virus; which in turn, they licensed to Microsoft to create Microsoft Antivirus whose main competitor was Norton Antivirus.

CPS also released CPAV for Netware 3.xx and 4.x Netware servers in 1993.

In 1993 CPS acquired  XTree a file manager originally designed for use under DOS by Underwear Systems, later Executive Systems, Inc. (ESI) and first released on 1 April 1985.

PC Tools for Windows (PCTW) 2.0  was released in 1993 which ran on Windows 3.1 and Windows 95/98 but was late to the market as CPS had underestimated how rapidly users were going to shift to Windows from DOS. This was a major factor in why CPS was acquired by Symantec in 1994, for around $60 million.

After the Symantec acquisition the development group for 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.

Central Point Software 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 Commodore64/128)
• Copy II PC
• Copy II Mac
• Copy II ST (for Atari ST/TT series computers)
• MacTools and MacTools Pro
• More PC Tools
• LANlord
• Deluxe Option Board

Software Products

	Copy II Plus 4.0 1982 Copy II Plus (Copy ][ Plus) is a Disk Utility which includes both a powerful DOS disk utility package and a sophisticated Bit Copy program. Manufacturer : Central Point Software Type : Software

	PC Tools Deluxe for the Macintosh 1989 PC Tools for Macintosh is a utility software suite designed to optimize and maintain an Apple Macintosh computer. Manufacturer : Central Point Software Type : Software

	XTree for Windows 1993 PC Tools for Macintosh is a utility software suite designed to optimize and maintain an Apple Macintosh computer. Manufacturer : Central Point Type : Software - Game

People Related to Central Point :

Mike Brown