Snailware Mission Statement

Snailware is software for snails. Snails are older slower computers. We consider this a term of affection, not an insult. We love our snails.

As snail owners, ourselves, we understand it can be quite frustrating to find decent software that will run on older operating systems and equipment. We understand your pain. Too many developers today are filling their software with eye candy, features, and bloat that give our snails indigestion and headaches. They assume everyone is running the latest & greatest hardware and operating system, when that just isn't true.

Around this time last year, there were at least 50 to 70 million snails out there running some form of Windows 9x (95, 98, ME). That's not exactly a small number. Their owners had just as many valid reasons for not buying a new computer or upgrading their operating systems. Odds are that most of those systems are still in use, and still running the same operating systems they were last year. Microsoft ending support for those operating systems didn't suddenly enable that old hardware to run Windows XP (or Vista). And there wasn't suddenly a PC fairy, delivering new computers to replace all those older machines.

Too often, snail owners are treated with a great amount of disrespect. It is just as wrong to pass judgement on them as it is to pass judgement on your neighbor with a 6 to 10 year refridgerator. Just because something is old doesn't make it useless junk. And it doesn't make their owners less deserving of common curtesy and respect. Hardware and operating systems do not define the value of a human life.

It also doesn't make snail owners less deserving of quality software. Their money is just as green as anybody else's. It would be crazy to tell someone they didn't deserve food or to refuse to sell it to them, just because their refridgerator is more than 5 years old. The same goes for owners of older PC's.

It's really not that different when you stop and think about it. In fact a new computer costs about as much as a new refridgerator and can have about the same life span, in terms of years of use. A new PC bought today will become a snail rather quickly. If you are not a snail owner now, you may become one very soon. We hope you won't have the problems that current snail owners are experiencing, when your time comes.

It is the goal of this site to present software that is snail friendly.

We will try to present software which is less than 1 year old, when we can. There may be times where we might present older software or an older, yet still available version, which may be snail friendly when the latest version is not.

Everything we present will be tested by our own friendly team of snails. If our snails don't like it, then it won't be listed here.

You will find nothing but honesty, integrity, and respect here. We will not do anything that would violate our principles or cause us to lose our self respect. We wouldn't be able to live with ourselves if we did. Please read our disclaimer to learn more.

If you are a developer that has an application that you think is snail friendly and you would like it considered for inclusion in our list, you may email us for more information and arrange for a snail test. If our snails like it, we will write about it.