SideKick (software)

Sidekick was a Personal Information Manager (PIM) published by the American company Borland in 1984 under the direction of Philippe Kahn . Sidekick initially ran in text mode on an IBM PC under MS-DOS as one of the first and most popular " Terminate and Stay Resident " programs. It therefore enabled a simple form of multitasking at a relatively early stage , in that it continued to run inconspicuously in the background after it was started and could be called using a hotkey while other programs were started. Although Sidekick ran in text mode, it incorporated some elements of graphical user interfaces, similar to those of the Apple Macintosh and later Microsoft Windows .

Sidekick consisted of various small programs:

• Personal calendar
• Text editor with command structure similar to WordStar
• calculator
• ASCII character table
• directory
• Dialer for dialing phone numbers

The manufacturer Borland published a sales figure of one million copies in the first three years. Later versions of Sidekick ran under Microsoft Windows, OS / 2 and the Apple Macintosh.

Individual evidence

• Sidekick Museum ( Memento from July 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive )