I’m not one to generally ‘copy’ others content, but I did like this! I did actually go on this site about 2 months ago, but didn’t write about it.

You may have heard jokes about some old failed Microsoft product called “Bob” or seen that big yellow smiley face wearing nerdy glasses, and wondered “what the heck was that all about?”.

Microsoft Bob was a product design at those who weren?t confident in computing. Bob itself I think was good in one way, it could be booted into, or just ran as a standard app. It didn?t have very good graphics, to today?s standard, but back then I bet it sort of did. (I got my first computer in ?99).

Bob was released just before Windows 95, and didn?t have features like Windows Explorer. The reasons Bob failed (according to Toasytech) are:

Bob required a minimum of a 486 with 8 megs of ram, 30 megs of free disk space, and 256 color VGA. Many computers of the day did not meet these minimum requirements.
It was too “cute” for the average PC users of the day.
Most people at the time who wanted ease of use would just get a Macintosh.
Bob was not useful enough to justify its initial sale price of almost $100.
Windows 95, which was released later that year, had the new Windows Explorer user interface which wiped the floor with Bob.

I see why, the fact it needed a whopping 8MB of RAM, but more importantly Windows 95 effectively killed it.

Two versions of Bob were release 1.00 and 1.00a. Bob was set in a house, with rooms and clickable objects which launched applications.

A strange thing about Bob was nearly everything was vector (WMF) graphic. Many objects in the room are just for decoration (some are even animated like a fire and lava lamp!), but some were programs that only ran in Bob. This allows Bob to look decent at any resolution.

Does the dog on the left look familar? I think it?s in MS Office now and he?s also the WinXP help assistant.

Bob himself is now aothing but a mere office assistant.

With Rover?s help you can change room, and modify the room.

The image below is a heavily customized room which has Netscape, Real and some other app in.

Both Windows and DOS Programs can be launched from our beloved Bob! Bob also includes a [simple] word-processor. I don?t have the space in this post for a screenshot so here?s a link to one.

It also includes a financial program, an address book, a calendar, a checkbook, GeoSafari, and an email client, but you need an MCI dial-up account to use it (guess what, not included!).

Bob also has various friends (like Rover).

Tags: bob, windows, microsoft, windows bob, microsoft flops, software, operating systems, win shells, shell, shells, windows shells, ms, history, computer history

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