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Bonzi Buddy

bonzi.link

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Re: Bonzi Buddy

#81

Post by naikrovek »

goinfar wrote: post #64
naikrovek wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you aware that software installations and customizations take you further away from "vanilla", rather than closer to it?

Have you tried the classic shell? It is a first for me with any new windows install.

the windows 10 shell is fine.

press and release windows key, type the name of the application you want, press enter.

same as windows 7.

why would I need a different shell? last time I tried one, almost 20 years ago, it crashed continually and was therefore completely useless. same with all of the stardock software I bought. garbage, all of it.

Re: Bonzi Buddy

#82

Post by userbinator »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #63
gameswithgo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it was 100% malware, why are people looking back at this fondly lately?

Spyware and adware, yes. Malware, no. They weren't trying to cause damage.

Ironic how these days Windows itself probably contains more spyware and adware and likely exfiltrates far more data about you than Bonzi Buddy was ever able to.

Re: Bonzi Buddy

#83

Post by shiftpgdn »

na85 wrote: post #54
mrfusion wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss that sense of wonder from the early computing days.

I lost at least a week when I figured out you could change the WinXP start menu text with a hex editor and went down the rabbit hole from there. Having a start menu that read "na85" in lieu of "Start" made teenage me feel like the leetest of haxors.

That made me think back to running litestep as an alternative shell on my Windows98 computer and occasionally having to pull the drive and mount it in another system to recover it when I blew it up with a bad configuration.

Re: Bonzi Buddy

#84

Post by arc-in-space »

Fwirt wrote: post #17

All this, and only 16MB of RAM and 11MB of disk space required! I'm sure today this would be an Electron app that used at least an order of magnitude more resources. We certainly live in interesting times.

Wait, but that was a lot back then.

Re: Bonzi Buddy

#85

Post by droidist2 »

bashinator wrote: post #47
shireboy wrote: post #20

Geeze, that's a blast from the past. You know it's funny- I used to periodically go looking for things to customize my desktop experience. This, those little dogs and cats, Rainmeter, Amiga workbench hacks, etc. etc. Nowadays- I supposed finally burned by enough malware and having become curmudgeonly- I want the most minimal "plain vanilla" setup I can get and pride myself in hardly ever installing _anything_.

One word: xroach

I really like xsnow

Re: Bonzi Buddy

#86

Post by droidist2 »

elliekelly wrote: post #25
_qbjt wrote: post #24

I know it's silly but I actually have some pretty fond childhood memories of Bonzi Buddy. Me and my cousin installed it on the family computer (running Windows ME at the time!) and would use the text-to-speech feature to make it say crazy, usually profanity-laden, things. In retrospect it was obvious adware / malware but not as bad as some of the other junk that would end up on your PC back in those days. The litany…

Do you remember Alice? The chat bot?

No, but I do remember SmarterChild.

Re: Bonzi Buddy

#87

Post by raverbashing »

bserge wrote: post #66
naikrovek wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it has little to do with age, to me, though it is far more common in older people: you value your time, and spending ages customizing everything does not help you reach your goals, so you just don't do it.

Plus, who even sees their desktop these days? :D

Exactly

I either have a terminal window full screen or a browser

I think "Desktop Customization" were for the times we had to kill before the internet got so commonplace.

Re: Bonzi Buddy

#88

Post by exporectomy »

na85 wrote: post #54
mrfusion wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss that sense of wonder from the early computing days.

I lost at least a week when I figured out you could change the WinXP start menu text with a hex editor and went down the rabbit hole from there. Having a start menu that read "na85" in lieu of "Start" made teenage me feel like the leetest of haxors.

Haha. I wondered what "na85" meant so I looked up Urban Dictionary and it turns out you're the authority on "1337".

Re: Bonzi Buddy

#89

Post by wincy »

naikrovek wrote: post #81
goinfar wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried the classic shell? It is a first for me with any new windows install.

the windows 10 shell is fine. press and release windows key, type the name of the application you want, press enter. same as windows 7. why would I need a different shell? last time I tried one, almost 20 years ago, it crashed continually and was therefore completely useless. same with all of the stardock software I bought. garbage, all of it.

Except that if it doesn’t find thr application it will search Bing if you aren’t using Windows 10 Enterprise. This can’t be turned off unless you edit the registry. I was furious when I figured this out.

Re: Bonzi Buddy

#90

Post by StavrosK »

exporectomy wrote: post #88
na85 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lost at least a week when I figured out you could change the WinXP start menu text with a hex editor and went down the rabbit hole from there. Having a start menu that read "na85" in lieu of "Start" made teenage me feel like the leetest of haxors.

Haha. I wondered what "na85" meant so I looked up Urban Dictionary and it turns out you're the authority on "1337".

Why? I couldn't find anything on UD.
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