BozoBuddy, No Friend of Mine! Bonzi Buddy
Written: Mar 07 '00 (Updated Aug 31 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Comes with an un-install feature that actually works
Cons: Constant ads for upgrades, poor performance
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| thedragonweyr's Full Review: Bonzi Buddy |
Peedy is a cute little dickens, or so I thought the first time he flew out of the distance to tell me he loves me! Lucky me, I have a friend in the computer who loves me and can understand spoken commands. Ok, I got sucked into the upgrade for the voice recognition program. I even spent hours reading excerpts from great literature into my microphone to teach the feather-brain what I sound like. Wasted hours, as it turned out. I still could not get Peedy to stop trying to sell me upgrades, stop telling stupid jokes, or leave off taking me to the Bonzi home page to buy something new, exciting, and useless.
I became acquainted with Peedy when I succumbed to InternetBoost. As a bonus for buying InternetBoost ($14.95) I was also allowed to download a fully functional version of BonziBuddy. I don't know what the partially functional version is like, but if I had the full version it must be pretty awful. Maybe the stepped-down Peedy is ALL ads and bad trivia and jokes instead of only about 90%.
The obvious annoyance factor aside, this could be a useful program if it worked as advertised. In my experience, the search capabilities were very poor and complicated to use. The one nifty feature, Peedy reading web site content aloud, is marred by having to reach the site through a Peedy-generated browser. If asked to read at random, because my eyes were getting tired, he would tartly tell me that there was no page selected. Even when he did read a page, he read EVERYTHING! This included attempting to pronounce acronyms and all the fine print at the bottom. I could not get him to skip down the page and if interrupted, Peedy would start all over at the top. All in all, a very frustrating experience.
I generated a lot of bad karma with Peedy by convincing my husband and a good friend to get him also. We all bought InternetBoost and the speech program, getting full versions of Peedy for "free." (I should tell you that we are susceptible to anything promising faster download time because we live in a rural area, possessed of poor phone lines, limited ISP choices, and very crowded bands.) My husband was the first to whip out the filleting knife and serve up pressed parrot, I was next with parrot au gratin flambeed with dragon breath, and finally, my friend, who had to purchase a Peedy-free laptop, because her young children are so in love with the mouthy green menace (a very expensive bit of bad stuff on my head here).
Incidentally, we have yet to notice any increase in download time. I cannot even tell if the blasted InternetBoost program is functioning as it does not display any icons to that effect. Repeated attempts to reach Bonzi resulted in no customer support, not even "form" emails in response to my questions about InternetBoost. However, inquires about BonziBuddy generated even more suggestions that I buy the upgrades! This is a genuine, made-by-a-dragon, review. If it appears under any name other than Thedragonweyr, report the miscreant for plagiarism.
Peedy has finally receded into my memory, sort of like a really bad nightmare, and I hardly ever wake up screaming because animated green parrots are attacking my hard drive. When it comes to "free" software, I am much more careful now about what I try. One star, grudgingly given, for a good idea, even if poorly executed. Back to the drawing board, Bonzi boys!
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
thedragonweyr
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Member: Pamela Matlack Klein
Location: Appomattox, VA
Reviews written: 131
Trusted by: 124 members
About Me:
The sky is falling!
~Chicken Little~
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