[zapzupnz]

In fairness to the salesperson, they would've been right for typical internet usage. Late 90s and early 00s was the era of the internet toolbar; Windows users never left home without having at least 5 search bars and emoticon buttons!

And all the CPU-consuming adware and malware that came with them.

[grawprog]

I'd gotten pretty good at disabling all the sneaky checkboxes, 'extra install options' and fucking bonzai buddies that seemed to be bundled with everything back then. I ended up having to reformat and reinstall everything once because of my carelessness. I was really careful not to install anything like that afterwards. They used to hide the 'extra bonus stuff' really well sometimes.

Even some legitimate things were bundled with some horrible spy and adware that make the ad ridden nightmare dystopia we have today seem quaint.

[flukus]

Apart from bonzi buddy being annoying, it didn't do anything that our modern browsers (chrome) and operating systems (windows, android) don't have baked in these days.

Which is why I can in all seriousness call google a spyware company.

[grawprog]

Yeah. Bonsai Buddy didn't do much other than annoy. There were some pretty bad ones though. It was more tongue in cheek. The invisible mass data gathering, ad targetting and general invasiveness into every aspect of life is far more terrifying than some spyware feeding you the occasional popup.

[zapzupnz]

> Bonsai Buddy didn't do much other than annoy

and eat up the limited amount of RAM on low-end machines, back when 32 MB of RAM as standard was still being sold in OEM builds.