I'm currently running the latest version of Microsoft Girlfriend
and I've been having some problems lately. I've been running
Drinking Buddies as a primary application and all the Girlfriend
releases I've tried have always conflicted with it. I hear that
Drinking Buddies 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 utility to turn it off. I just run them separately
and it works okay.

Girlfriend also seems to have problem co-existing with my MS
Football, Basketball, Baseball, Hockey, Golf and Soccer programs,
often trying to abort them with some sort of timing-incompatibility
errors. 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 had 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 and also installed a
virus
protection programme. 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 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. I've
never liked how Girlfriend is totally 'object oriented', either.

A year ago, a friend of mine upgraded his version of Girlfriend to
Girlfriend Plus 1.0, which is a terminate-and-stay-resident version
of
Girlfriend. He discovered that Girlfriend Plus 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
until
he upgrades his system's hardware. One of the primary reasons he
decided
to go with Wife 1.0 was because it came bundled with FreeSexPlus.
Well,
as it turns out, the source allocation module of Wife 1.0, when
bundled
with MSFull-Time-Job, sometimes prohibits access to FreeSexPlus,
particularly the new Plug-in and Device-Drivers 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 MS Mother-in-Law
which has an automatic pop-up display and a sound feature he
can't turn off. I told him to try installing MS Mistress 1.0 but he
said he had heard that if you try to run it without first
uninstalling
Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will automatically Pkunzip MSLawyer, scan all
subdirectories and delete MSMoney files before doing the uninstall
itself.
Then Mistress 1.0 won't install anyway because of insufficient
resources and it directs you back to Girlfriend 1.0, thereby starting
the
whole cycle over again.

Otherwise, you have no option but to do everything by hand, which I'm
told can be quicker and less complicated.



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