All things considered, the world of computer tech is still relatively new, and products have come and gone very quickly. A lot of software that was once essential has been superseded by alternatives and either been discontinued outright or simply fallen into obscurity, sometimes even morphing into something completely different.

That second half is what we're talking about today. You may now know it, but many apps that used to be all the rage back in the day are still alive and... well. They certainly don't have the popularity they used to, but they can still be used on Windows 11 and have their diehard fans. Let's take a stroll down memory lane to remember some of these apps.

7 WinAmp, foobar2000, and RealPlayer

Media players are mostly obsolete now

I mentioned all three of these in the same breath because they're all very similar kinds of apps. Media players for Windows used to be pretty major when Windows Media Player lacked support for so many popular video and audio formats, and for music, many of these players offered better ways to easily organize your libraries.

Eventually, though, Windows Media Player got better, and where it didn't, VLC Media Player became the de facto media player that pretty much everyone uses, not to mention a lot of media these days is consumed via streaming services with their own dedicated apps. Foobar2000 and RealPlayer both live on with pretty much the same spirit as before, but far less popularity.

WinAmp still offers its classic media player for download too, but the focus seems to be on the mobile apps and the platform for music creators that's now offered under the same brand.

6 Napster

Still here, now with less crime

Napster's original run was very shot-lived, but incredibly impactful. A peer-to-peer file sharing tool, Napster was massively popular among those who didn't want to pay for their music, which at the time was a very prevalent mindset. Of course, artists didn't like that, and lawsuits ensued resulting in the death of the service.

But the Napster brand was popular enough that other services wanted to capitalize on it, andn in 2003, a company called Roxio launched a legal music streaming service under the same, which was eventually bought by Best Buy in 2008, and then by another music streaming service called Rhapsody in 2011. In 2016, Rhapsody renamed its entire company and product to Napster, and today, the service is co-owned by a blockchain company called Alogirand and a crypto company called Hivemind. It's still a music streaming service, though, which is surprising considering how much this company has been through.

5 TeamSpeak

Usurped by Discord

Voice chat has been an important piece of technology for almost as long as online gaming has been a thing, and early on, people realized they needed a lightweight solution that wouldn't hurt their gaming performance. That's where TeamSpeak came into the picture, promising a lag-free, lightweight alternative to platforms like Windows Messenger or (later) Skype, which could be less than optimal for gamers.

In modern times, TeamSpeak has mostly been superseded by Discord, which is the go-to communication platform for gamers. However, the service lives on. Interestingly, the stable release is still version 3, originally released in 2011 (albeit with multiple smaller updates since then), but the service is currently beta testing version 6.0, after version 5.0 was also tested in beta form for a few years but never saw an official stable release.

4 Netscape

One the biggest browser in the world

Netscape Navigator was one of the first massively popular web browsers to ever exist, having appeared in the early days of the internet back in 1994. The browser lived on for a few years, but with the introduction of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which was bundled with Windows at no additional cost, Netscape faced an uphill battle and quickly disappeared from the public eye until being completely discontinued in 2008.

But color us surprised when, in 2024, AOL (owner of the Netscape brand) decided to re-launch the browser as a skin of the Chromium project. This new browser has next to nothing to do with that original project, but it does enough to qualify Netscape for this list, so it gets credit for that.

3 WordPerfect

This one even predates me

Growing up in the 2000s, I only ever knew Microsoft Office as the office suite everyone would use. But before Microsoft entered that market, WordPerfect was already at the top of the game, offering the most popular word processor in the world in the late 80s and early 90s. Of course, this was all before Windows became a major platform.

WordPerfect released a version of the app for Windows PCs, but it was plagued with stability issues, and by this point, Microsoft had introduced Word, which worked far better on Windows and was designed around the mouse and keyboard paradigm, whereas WordPerfect still focused mostly on keyboard-only use, making it less intuitive. This initiated a rapid decline for WordPerfect as Windows became the primary OS for PCs.

Despite failing from the start as a Windows app, WordPerfect still exists as an office suite, though the latest major release is from 2021.

2 WinZip

Who pays for this anymore?

Back in the day, handling compressed archives on a PC wasn't quite as easy as it is today. Sure, Windows added support for ZIP files eventually, but the compression options were limited, and Windows wasn't particularly good at it. So, professional paid solutions had their place on the market, and one you would always hear about was WinZip.

Born in 1991, WinZip was a juggernaut of file compression, but after Windows introduced the ability to compress and open ZIP folders and newer archival formats like RAR and 7Z appeared, WinZip started falling by the wayside, especially when tools like WinRAR and eventually 7-Zip were available free of charge (WinRAR is technically a free trial, but you can realistically use it forever without paying). There just wasn't a purpose to WinZip for most people, and with the company being acquired by Corel (now called Alludo), it didn't really strive to break new ground and it just lived on for those who remember the WinZip name.

1 WindowBlinds

Windows customization just isn't the same anymore

I don't know if my perspective on this is a little skewed, but back in my early teens, I was extremely eager to customize my Windows PC in the craziest ways, and I know I wasn't the only one. Stardock is a company that's been around for a long time because it capitalized on those desires, and back in the day, WindowBlinds was the star app of the company.

Customizing Windows today is far more difficult as the operating has been more streamlined and locked down, but back in the day, WindowBlinds let you do so much to your PC. Everything from the taskbar to the Start menu and the application windows could be made to look radically different with all sorts of crazy themes that could be designed relatively easily by the community. I remember trying some absolutely hideous themes, but I loved them because of how they looked.

WindowBlinds is not a dead app, and it's been updated for use on Windows 11, but it's just not the same in terms of popularity and features. WindowBlinds themes don't work as well as they used to, with a lot of UI elements unable to be properly themed, and Stardock has shifted focus to its other apps that have more meaningful purposes.

What programs will disappear from view in the future?

While all of these apps still exist, there's very little reason for most people to use them today, and it's easy to see why they're no longer in the spotlight. While you can go ahead and download these apps, there's no real reason to do so in the modern day. Still, it's interesting to think about what apps we use today that may be completely forgotten in the next few years.