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One-hit wonders

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zridling:
Victoria Shannon takes a look at two one-hit wonders in a "where are they now" column which caught my eye. I think one of the biggest one-hit wonders that never survived was one of the first PIMs, Ecco Pro. Only Microsoft OneNote has been able to match its outlining abilities. Some claim that Ecco Pro never died.

What other one-hit tech or software wonders have you come across (alive or dead)?

Harrie:
It's amazing!  I read this the other day and was highly interested.  Then today, at another forum, I saw an old post where someone was saying how utterly fantastic Ecco Pro was.....so I go searching on it and find this write-up - heck, I'm drooling now!  If I could just be sure it would work with Windows 2000, I'd get it right now! 

Well, one wonder I know of, half alive and half dead (because it's now a more advanced version and no longer freeware, is RegCleaner.  I like the old version of it much, much better than the later ones, and I still use it.  You can still get the freeware version, too - here  It's been a long time, but I believe the later was JV16 Power Tools.  As I said, I prefer the older version. 

zridling:
RegCleaner is similar to XP Smoker — two of the most powerful and scary apps every built. Another program that was fantastic was FixLinks by Stratopoint Software. That program would take your entire website, examine every link and determine if it was valid, and if it wasn't, you could set it to find the new webpage and fix the dead link for you. It was amazing! When I had my Great Books site fully linked with ebooks, that was a lifesaver. But once it faded out, I had to revert to a mere list.

alxwz:
Hi,

I doubt that the term "one-hit wonders" is a good choice, regarding that most formerly successful but now almost-forgotten programs went through several iterations to become exactly that, successful (not MS-scale, but somehow), and then abandoned.

Regarding Ecco Pro, it was at v. 4 when it was cancelled (in 1997), and you can get it as a free download from NetManage, who own it (http://supportweb.netmanage.com/ts_viewnow/downloads/patchesUnsupported/ecco.asp). The support page http://supportweb.netmanage.com/ecco/ is still online. There is still a very active user group at Yahoo (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eccopro/), many members run it on Windows 2000 and XP, and some are looking into using it on Vista. There are several other sites dedicated to Ecco Pro. Seemingly it is possible to sync it (basic PIM data) to Palms, but that may break any time. Pocket PCs are another matter, entirely. Ecco Pro had been a big subject on another great site, outliners.com, that just folded recently.

There were some efforts to open-source it , but none were successful (maybe the reason was the database behind it).

I have to say that I took several attempts to really understand that app. I have two thick ring binders full of materials that you can still get online. Great concept. Wish it were still alive.

Having not a lot of experience with the great apps before the all-Microsoft-age, I can only do some kind of software archaeology, but I might throw some other names into the discussion: VisiCalc, Lotus Agenda, Lotus Improv, Lotus Magellan, Lotus 1-2-3, Word Perfect, dbase. X-Tree. Norton Commander. A lot of other things symantec-ed, perhaps (Grandview?).

alxwz:
Oh, I forgot: The only well-known bug in Ecco Pro is that it doesn't accept recurring events after 12/31/1999 easily (there is some workaround I can't describe exactly, as I don't know the program by heart; I'm yet another corporate Outlook victim).

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