Central Point Software
More info
- Creator
- Michael Brown
- Released
- 1981–1994
- Type
- Utility software
- Successor
- Acquired by Symantec in 1994
The Oregon company that started out selling tools for defeating copy protection and ended up supplying Microsoft with its antivirus.
Central Point was founded in 1981 and made its name with Copy II Plus for the Apple II and Copy II PC. Both duplicated copy-protected floppies, officially so buyers could make backups. Game publishers took a different view, but the product was legal and sold very well.
PC Tools, from the mid-eighties, bundled a file manager, disk repair, undelete and backup into one menu system for MS-DOS, and was the main rival to Norton Utilities. Central Point Anti-Virus was licensed to Microsoft and shipped with MS-DOS 6 as MSAV. In 1994 Symantec, owner of Norton, bought the company and wound down most of the competing product line.