Photos: Dinosaur sightings: Lotus Symphony 3

IBM/Lotus recently released an office suite by the name of Symphony, which is based on OpenOffice. However, this isn't the first office suite to go by the name Symphony.

Back in 1985, when DOS-based computers ruled the world, a company called Lotus Development Corporation decided to capitalize on the success of its groundbreaking Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet application with a new integrated application suite called Symphony.

When it was released, Symphony cost $695 and came on twelve 360K floppies.

Promotional material from the time described Lotus Symphony 3.0:

"Lotus Symphony 3.0 is the one software package for all your business needs. Conduct business in perfect harmony. Symphony Release 3 combines powerful spreadsheet, word processing, graphics, communications, and database in an exciting graphical windows environment. Each Symphony module has great dimension, because it works in concert with others."

(CNET sister site TechRepublic runs a regular series called "Dinosaur Sightings" in which it takes a look at archaic technologies. News.com is publishing this excerpt.)

Caption text by TechRepublic's Greg Shultz