I'm currently running the latest version of GirlFriend
and I've been having some problems lately. I've been
running the same version of DrinkingBuddies 1.0 forever as
my primary application, and all the GirlFriend releases I've
tried have always conflicted with it. I hear that DrinkingBuddies won't crash if GirlFriend is
run in background mode and the sound is turned off. But I'm
embarrassed to say I can't find the switch to turn the sound
off. I just run them separately, and it works okay. Girlfriend also seems to have a problem co-existing with
my Golf program, often trying to abort Golf with some sort
of timing incompatibility. I probably should have stayed with GirlFriend 1.0, but I
thought I might see better performance from GirlFriend 2.0.
After months of conflicts and other problems, I consulted a
friend who has had experience with GirlFriend 2.0. He said I
probably didn't have enough cache to run GirlFriend 2.0,
and eventually it would require a Token Ring to run
properly. He was right - as soon as I purged my cache, it
uninstalled itself. Shortly after that, I installed GirlFriend 3.0 beta. All
the bugs were supposed to be gone, but the first time I
used it, it gave me a virus anyway. I had to clean out my
whole system and shut down for a while. I very cautiously upgraded to GirlFriend 4.0. This time I
used a SCSI probe first and also installed a virus
protection program. It worked okay for a while until I
discovered that GirlFriend 1.0 was still in my system. I tried running GirlFriend 1.0 again with GirlFriend 4.0
still installed, but GirlFriend 4.0 has a feature I didn't
know about that automatically senses the presence of any
other version of GirlFriend and communicates with it in some
way, which results in the immediate removal of both
versions. The version I have now works pretty well, but there are
still some problems. Like all versions of GirlFriend, it is
written in some obscure language I can't understand, much
less reprogram. Frankly I think there is too much attention
paid to the look and feel rather than the desired
functionality. Also, to get the best connections with your
hardware, you usually have to use gold-plated contacts. And
I've never liked how GirlFriend is totally
"object-oriented." A year ago, a friend of mine upgraded his version of
GirlFriend to GirlFriendPlus 1.0, which is a Terminate and
Stay Resident version of GirlFriend. He discovered that
GirlFriendPlus 1.0 expires within a year if you don't
upgrade to Fiancee 1.0. So he did, but soon after that, he
had to upgrade to Wife 1.0, which he describes as a huge
resource hog. It has taken up all his space, so he can't
load anything else. One of the primary reasons he decided to go with Wife
1.0 was because it came bundled with FreeSexPlus. Well, it turns out the resource allocation module of Wife
1.0 sometimes prohibits access to FreeSexPlus, particularly
the new Plug-Ins he wanted to try. On top of that, Wife 1.0
must be running on a well warmed-up system before he can do
anything. Although he did not ask for it, Wife 1.0 came with
MotherInLaw which has an automatic pop-up feature he can't
turn off. I told him to try installing Mistress 1.0, but he said
he heard if you try to run it without first uninstalling
Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before doing
the uninstall itself. Then Mistress 1.0 won't install anyway
because of insufficient resources.