Nowadays, we all look for the latest software, sleek interfaces, and web apps, and it’s easy to forget the unsung heroes of productivity that have quietly stood the test of time. Microsoft had a big share of discontinued apps along the way, but some of them were really great for their purpose and some might be even better than the modern apps we have today. Here, we take a look at a few of the heroes from the early digital era.

10 Microsoft Mathematics

A graphing calculator on PC

My father had a physical graphing calculator in the 90s, and it was the most precious device in our home. They had the price of an average laptop nowadays, and were used for complex equations and math problems.

In 2006, Microsoft released the first version of Mathematics or Math that did all that, but on your computer. The first versions even had the representation of a graphing calculator on the screen.

The app was amazing for students, educators, or the average math-loving folk.

Its interface was simple and intuitive, and, most importantly, worked perfectly on most computers of that time.

Now, you can find many online calculators and math software online, but they are either paid or showing ads. Believe it or not, the successor of Mathematics is still online, available for free. It is called Math Solver, and it doesn’t have the charm of Microsoft Mathematics, but it can still help you a lot.

9 Microsoft SyncToy

Syncing files and folders was simple in Windows XP

SyncToy started as an app included in the Powertoys set from Windows XP. It was a file synchronization tool that helped you copy, move, and synchronize files between different folders or drives.

Honestly, it was a bit slow when you tried to compare or sync folders larger than 300MB, but at that time, that was considered a lot.

Nevertheless, it performed fairly well, and it even had a backup feature. Moreover, it was completely free. The latest version of Synctoy, 2.1, was discontinued in 2021.

8 Microsoft Virtual PC

The early days of virtualization

Microsoft Virtual PC was one of the earliest virtualization platforms, preceding Hyper-V, VMware, or VirtualBox.

For those who are less aware, this tool allowed you to run a virtual instance of an operating system on another operating system. The first version was released in 2006 and in 2009, Microsoft changed its name to Windows Virtual PC. By then, it was only compatible with Windows 7.

The great quality of the software was that it was extremely easy to use. It had a simple interface and, with just a few clicks, you had a computing inception ready. In 2011, the software was discontinued in favor of new technologies, but many miss the simplicity of Microsoft Virtual PC.

7 Microsoft Office Picture Manager

The image editor inside Microsoft Office

Once upon a time, Microsoft Office had a built-in image editor called Microsoft Office Picture Manager. It was a remake of another app, Microsoft Picture Library, and it was loved by many users. Even if it had basic features like color correction, crop, flip, resize, and rotate, it was free and readily available for the first time in Office 2003.

Microsoft Office Picture Manager’s charm, as it’s the case with a good deal of software included in this list, was its simplicity, but not only that. The tool was an extremely efficient image manager for all the Office applications. Once you edited the image, you shared it directly on Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word.

The story lasted until Office 2010, when Microsoft no longer included it in Office 2013. By then, Word received basic image editing capabilities and Microsoft also had Photos as an alternative editor.

6 Windows Movie Maker

Probably the best app in Windows ME

Most of us who installed Windows ME know that it was pretty bad. However, that was the first time we had seen Windows Movie Maker. The video editor was part of the Windows Essentials suite and it had basic features. However, the tool really started to shine in 2005, when it was updated with a DVD-burning feature. It was the DVD era, and we were burning a lot of software and media on the disks for backup.

At that moment, Windows Movie Maker came as a really simple tool to do that and more. Even at that time, there were more complex tools, but they were harder to work with. Now, Microsoft is investing a lot in ClipChamp, which is showing promising results.

5 Microsoft Agent

That’s where Clippy came from

Not many people remember Microsoft Agent because it was not a mainstream application. It was a kit that helped developers create animated characters inside their applications or websites. But if you know the sassy paperclip assistant Clippy from Microsoft Office, that was one of the Microsoft Agents created with this software suite.

Microsoft Agent had a dedicated website where you could get four such animated characters for free, who were called Merlin, Genie, Peedy, and Robby.

I didn’t try using it because it looked pretty complicated and discouraging at that time, but the characters created using Microsoft Agent were really spectacular at that moment. Sadly, the software development kit was discontinued in 2009, right before the Windows 7 release.

4 Microsoft FrontPage

Creating web pages for Internet Explorer

Back in the day when Internet Explorer had a foot in the browser war, Microsoft bought FrontPage from Vermeer Technologies to provide an easy way for developers to create web pages optimized for IE.

Front Page was touted as a WYSIWYG editor. That means What You See Is What You Get, and that’s exactly how the software was working. You didn’t even see the HTML code of the page, so everyone could create a webpage visually, in the lines that we use today. However, in 1996, this was really a big deal.

The software was so popular that Microsoft even released a version for macOS in 1998. However, it had fewer features, and it was never updated. Microsoft outed FrontPage in 2006 to focus on Microsoft SharePoint Designer and Microsoft Expression Web. Of course, FrontPage couldn’t hold a candle in front of more modern tools, but its friendly interface and usage could stand the test of time.

3 Microsoft NetMeeting

Simple VoIP conference calling

Microsoft released NetMeeting in 1996 together with Internet Explorer 3. That was before any IM clients, such as Yahoo Messenger or the counterpart from MSN. I haven’t seen a more simple PC VoIP calling client. It only had a few buttons, and it matched the Windows 95 style.

Now, if you and the other participants were hooked to a cable Ethernet connection, everything was pretty smooth. On dial-up connections, things would get complicated and you would often lose connection.

However, that wasn’t the app’s problem. The audio encoding was supported over 5.3 to 64kbit/s connections, but in the early days, the infrastructure was not as reliable as today.

NetMeeting had a pretty long run up to Windows Vista, but Microsoft dropped it on Windows XP, eventually.

2 Microsoft MapPoint

The ancestor of any map routing app

If you know about Microsoft MapPoint, that means you are a business professional, because that was the target client of this software. The software was a mapping and geographical information system, a so-called GIS.

The tool combined the capabilities of mapping, routing, and location-based analytics into a single app, and that was a great asset for organizations. For instance, it was used for sales territory management, logistics planning, and even CRM. It might have saved some lives as well, because some fire departments and emergency services used it back in 2000 when it was introduced.

The final version of MapPoint was released in 2013, with updates for map data and points of interest. However, Microsoft discontinued it one year later in favor of Windows Maps and Bing Maps.

1 Microsoft WordPad

The simple text editor that did the job well

Microsoft WordPad was discontinued by Microsoft but you can still use it if you copy the executable from a computer that still runs it.

This word processor was the perfect bridge between Notepad and Microsoft Word. It was the perfect go-to app if you needed to take some notes with basic formatting, and you could even save your document as .docx if you wanted to give it an official treatment.

To tell you the truth, I still use it on Windows 11 and I keep the executable safe. That’s because it’s a lot better if I want to make a list or take some notes faster. Besides that, you can also include images and even complex objects, and even PowerPoint slides if you want.

I never had any problems with WordPad and I can’t say the same about other more complex word-processing tools. It doesn’t have modern and fancy AI bots inside, but it does the job well.

Sometimes newer isn't better

These hidden gems from Microsoft remind us that sometimes, the old ways are the best. Even though these tools might not be in the spotlight anymore, they still have a knack for getting the job done often better than their flashy, modern counterparts.

What makes them so special? Well, they're simple to use, focus on exactly what you need without any extra fluff, and they just work every time. Whether you're diving into network management, crunching numbers, or whipping up quick documents, these forgotten heroes can surprise you with how well they perform. They might not have all the bells and whistles, but they sure know how to make your day easier and boost your productivity.