So Microsoft just stole the code and used it anyway. MS tried similar tactics on STAC in the hope of bundling the Stacker disk-compression tool with MS-DOS 6. In actual fact, people got by with the freebie versions and CP's sales of standalone products _and_ upgrades both stagnated. Microsoft promised CP that CP would make money from DOS 6 customers wishing to upgrade to the full versions. Cut-down versions of PC Tools Backup and the separate Central Point Antivirus were bundled with MS-DOS 6. What doomed Central Point software is that it did a licensing deal with Microsoft. Unlike rival extended formats, if you tried to DIR the disk from DOS, you got a warning message: It used an extended disk format, squeezing about 1.6 MB onto an HD 3½" floppy, and compressed data on the fly, so many megabytes of software or data could be squeezed onto the minimum number of floppies. The PC Tools backup/restore tool was also superb and extremely fast. It had one of the fastest floppy formatters around, and just about the fastest DOS disk-defragmenter I ever saw, nearly an order of magnitude quicker than Norton's. It was very useful even in the later DOS era it was a standard part of my travelling tech toolkit. Indeed, up to the point that the name was usurped by some unrelated software. CentralPoint PC Tools seems little remembered nowadays.
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