BONZI BUDDY : My Grape Ape Friend With The Slurred Speech
Written: May 13 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: interactive software; silly jokes and cute comments; organization tools
Cons: silly jokes and cute comments; slurred voice module
The Bottom Line: is that BonziBuddy is a fun interactive desktop pal that offers some decent features in the free version. You can purchase additional modules for even more interactive fun.
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| phineaskc's Full Review: Bonzi Buddy |
The BonziBuddy is my little chubby purple desktop pal that talks to me, tells me jokes, sends email messages, surfs the net, keeps me organized, and more.
He is quite a looker too, standing about an inch tall with dark purple fur and a light purple mask and tummy. His eyes are big and round and his teeth sparkle when he smiles.
Bonzi swings onto my computer at startup with a twinkle in his eye and a flash of a smile. He always has a warm greeting and is always polite, addressing me by name. Bonzi has been a constant companion and you can get one of your own.
I downloaded the free version and although the features are limited with this version, there are additional modules you can purchase to make your friend even more interactive. Let's not jump ahead of ourselves though and take a look at some basics.
Bonzi's Home
When my BonziBuddy isn't hanging out with me, you will find him at his home in the Internet jungle at http://www.bonzi.com.
This is where you can download the free version or take a look at the many options that the upgraded version has to offer. You will find all the information you need on this purple charmer right here. Before we download your own version, let's make sure that we have the proper system requirements:
IE version 5.0 or greater
16 MB RAM and 11 MB Disk Space
Screen resolution of 800x600 or higher
Windows 95, 98 or NT 4.0
Sound Card
This program will not work with non-English versions, Mac systems, or other browsers.
Now that you have checked your system requirements, making sure you have an adequate home for Bonzi, let's take a look at some of the features he has to offer.
Bonzi's Features
Bonzi has an easy to setup menu interface that he walks you through step by step. You will enter some brief information like your name and he will talk you through the rest. You will have Bonzi set up in just a matter of minutes.
Bonzi swings onto my computer screen with a warm greeting, "Good Morning Pamela". He then sits wide-eyed, with his hands folded over his chest waiting for your commands. To activate Bonzi, just click on his tummy to go to the menu page.
Bonzi is an interactive companion and some of his features include:
BonziMail: This is probably my favorite feature that Bonzi offers. You can send animated email messages to your friends using Bonzi as a communication tool. You simply enter the address, the message, and from the menu to the right you then select the actions that you want Bonzi to perform. Bonzi will perform animated actions after reading the email message to your friend. Some of these actions include blowing a kiss, clapping his hands, beating his chest, doing a backflip, and 13 other actions. You insert these actions into the email by dragging and dropping the ones you want into the actual message on the left. Select just one action or combine several for more fun. After you have created your message, you can then preview it or send it.
Calendar: Bonzi helps me keep records organized and reminds me of special dates. Just this morning he looked over my calendar and gave me a quickie reminder that today was Mother's Day. The calendar feature allows you to add, edit, and delete entries including meeting times, descriptions, special events, and more.
Surfing The Net: With Bonzi, you surf the net via the Lycos Search Engine. Simply click on Bonzi's tummy or the banana in the startup bar and be taken to his homepage, where you can enter keywords to search or by entering the URL of the page you wish to visit. If that wasn't enough, you can also access select from the categories to the right for quick links to organized sections. You can select from entertainment, travel, sports, shopping, games, and finance.
Interact With Bonzi: By clicking on the 'Ask Me To' menu selection, you can interact with your pal. With the free version of Bonzi he will sing songs, tell you jokes, share interesting facts, and say sentences that you enter (remember to keep it clean).
For additional features and addons, you have to either become a Gold Member for $9.95 a month or purchase individual addons ranging in price from $9.95 to $14.95.
Bonzi's Personality
Bonzi is somewhat entertaining and has no problem entertaining himself by juggling coconuts, watching a butterfly circle around his head, or stare lovingly at you with a dopey smile on his face.
The jokes are ridiculously silly and I offer you an example of the humor you can expect.
What happened to the flea circus? A dog came and stole the show. At least he recognizes how silly they are too because he comments that he remembers when that one was actually funny. It's worth it to hear the jokes just to see him chuckle and smile.
The fun facts are not too bad and actually teach you a little something whether you want to learn or not. For example, Bonzi shared with me that a goldfish has the attention span of 3 seconds. Now where else could I have gained that type of knowledge?
Overall, my purple pal has a cute personality with lots to share. I think I wore him out this morning because he just informed me that he is going to relax for a while and flipped on a pair of sunglasses.
The nice thing about Bonzi is that I can control just how many interactions we have with each other. By clicking on the personality tab, I can control how much he talks and what he talks about. If I want to hear more jokes and less fact, I just slide the scale from less to more on each of the options.
Bonzi Flaws?
As charming and cute as Bonzi is, there are some annoying qualities about him. Besides the occasional interruptions with blurbs about his new updates and how to become a Gold Member, he also has a problem with crashing my browser at inappropriate times. A perfect example of this is when I was writing this review the first time, he decided to freeze in the middle of a joke so I lost all my information.
One of the most annoying aspects of Bonzi is his voice. His speech is somewhat slurred and comes out sounding like a 70's style video game. Very slow and drawn out. At first I thought it might be my sound card but noticed this was also a problem on my roommate's computer.
Overall Thoughts
Overall, I think Bonzi is adorable. When he isn't busy bugging me, he entertains himself by reading a book or staring about the screen. You can easily shutdown Bonzi by right clicking on him and selecting either to hide him, put him in quiet mode with the F9 key, or simply saying goodbye.
I no longer keep Bonzi in my startup menu but can activate him easily by clicking the shortcut on my desktop. I found that having him at startup was simply too many interactions.
If you are looking for a new friend to entertain you while you surf the net, an interesting way to browse the net, or just to add some kick to your email messaging then this is the program for you.
The free version is somewhat limited but addons are readily available. Personally I have avoided purchasing any additional components because frankly, I don't really want to hear 250 more jokes from my little purple pal.
In the words of BonziBuddy, Until next time my friend!
Recommended:
Yes
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phineaskc
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Member: Pamela
Location: Kansas City, Missouri
Reviews written: 211
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"Good lord, who Jiffy-popped her head?"
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