Review by Jeff (2004-03-21)

Overview - BANNER is an incredibly old program. I frequently go through tons of floppies to discern whether they are still good or not, and here I find this app, still alive and kicking from my days of the 80286 clone PC. We're talking 1989 era. This floppy still works. Although I have no real need of this program, I found it to be one of a kind, simple and effective. The fact that a 13 year old floppy disk (the 5.25 inch one, at that) is still perfectly readable makes this a truly treasuring backup. Made by Broderbund, you simply can't get this type of software anymore.

Description - Quite beautifully, a banner making program. Multi-page banners, special text and effects, 16 color capacity. Great for many types of celebrations. In my freeware collection, there is no other software that compares to this. To my knowledge, nothing is this simple. You start from step "A" and continue to step "Z", in a hand-holding fashion that gets the job done, fast and complete. This is a DOS app, as you can tell from the age of it. It supports CGA, EGA, MDA and the tried and true Hercules Monochrome Adapter. It's actually quite impressive.

Type - Commercial. A few things about this. It's 13 years old, and even though still listed on Broderbund's site, it's not supported by any way shape or form. Furthermore, checking the IDSA listing does not show Broderbund or The Learning Company on the list, so I assume that this is fairly safe. If posting this offends anyone, please contact me immediately. Currently the copyrights are valid for 75 years, so technically this piece is still copyrighted.

Compatibility - The requirements are fairly ancient - 8088 based computer with 580 k free conventional memory. Easily supported without problems in a DOS window in Win9x. Should be able to run properly emulated by the more advanced OS's as well. If anyone can get a modern printer working with this program, email me on how you did it.

A visitor wrote the following: "I chose deskjet 300 dpi, selected the printer in lpt2 and then followed the instrucions from http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/printfromdos.htm."