Miscellaneous

BOB also has some other smaller features.  For example, there is an educational game aimed at kids included called GeoSafari (which was actually made by Educational Insights Interactive).

GeoSafari 

BOB also includes some other areas around the virtual home, as well as the ability to add decorations to these areas.  Here are some examples:

And that’s about it.  There’s also a clock with a timer and alarm and a calendar, as well as a home information organizer.

Conclusions

So to sum up – let’s ask the question: what is BOB supposed to be?  It is supposed to be a simplified user interface for the inexperienced computer user.  And BOB is simplified.  The problem is that BOB feels more like a user interface for an elementary school student than it does for the real target audience – adults who just want an easy to use computer.  What BOB should be is “The Complete Idiot’s Guide” but in actuality it is “Easy Reader.”

And the rest is history.  Nobody liked BOB and Microsoft actually cancelled the product.  This is pretty rare for Microsoft – even when a new product does very, very poorly (consider Windows CE version 1.0, whose nickname was “wince”), Microsoft typically sticks to its guns and tries to improve the product.  Not so with BOB – it was abandoned.  It really is that bad.