J.A.R.V.I.S - The Digital Life Assistant

Human-computer interfaces have evolved a lot in the last decades. In this respect, do you remember those small convex screens that could only display monochrome text lines? Weren't they awesome? If you are a fan of the original Alien, or played the more recent Alien: Isolation video game, then you know of what I'm talking about. Having a talking screen with a console display is the dream of any seventies Sci-Fi buff. Now you too can live that dream... sort of.

J.A.R.V.I.S - The Digital Life Assistant sound very pompous but it essentially boils down to a console that interprets written or spoken commands similar to the Windows command prompt console. The distinguishing feature is that it talks back to you. Unfortunately you cannot engage in a conversation, it is not a bot. No AI here I'm afraid...

What you CAN do is input specific commands such as to lock the screen or turn off the monitor, return the time and date along with other somewhat less helpful functions. Still, there seem to be some functions that deal with weather forecast and news, though unfortunately they don't really work. As with the eighties software, J.A.R.V.I.S looks like it is a few decades old.

Features

• Console commands
• Spoken commands
• Audio feedback
• Some access to system functions

Pros

• It can amuse you for a couple of minutes or it can become a permanent addition if you want to lock your computer by speaking to it.

Cons

• We couldn't use any advanced feature such as weather or news retrieval. So much for compatibility.

Conclusion

I can't declare J.A.R.V.I.S as being bloatware. It's not big and does not come along some other application. So I guess it's in a class of its own...