Technical Support

TO: Technical Support

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.

UPDATE! Oct. 2, 1997

Upgrade Warning!

Last year a friend of mine upgraded Girlfriend 1.0 to Wife 1.0 and
found that it's a memory hog leaving very little system resources for other
applications.

He is only now noticing that Wife 1.0 also is spawning
Child-Processes, which are further consuming valuable resources. No mention
of this particular phenomenon was included in the product brochure or the
documentation,
though other users have informed him that this is to be expected due to the
nature of the application.

Not only that, Wife 1.0 is always launched at system
initialization, in order to monitor all other system activity. He's finding
that some applications such as
PokerNight 10.3, Football 2.5, and PubNight 7.0 are no longer able to run
at all, crashing the system when selected (even though they always worked
fine before).

At installation, Wife 1.0 provides no option as to the
installation of undesired Plug-ins such as MotherlnLaw 55.8 and
Brother-in-Law 0.5 (Beta). Also, system
performance seems to diminish with each passing day.

************

Some features he'd like to see in the upcoming wife 2.0.

1. A "Don't remind me again" button.

2. A Minimize button

3. An InstallShield Wizard feature that allows Wife 2.0 be installed with
the option to uninstall at anytime without the loss of cache and other system
resources.

4. An option to run the network driver in promiscuous mode, which would
allow the systems hardware probe feature to be much more useful.

****************

I myself decided to avoid all of the headaches associated with
Wife 1.0 by sticking with Girlfriend 2.0. Even here, however, I found many
problems.

Apparently you cannot install Girlfriend 2.0 on top of
Girlfriend 1.0. You must uninstall Girlfriend 1.0 first. Other users say
this is a long-standing bug, which I should have been aware of.

Apparently the versions of Girlfriend have conflicts over
shared use of the I/O port. You think they would have fixed such a stupid
bug by now. To make matters worse the uninstall program for Girlfriend 1.0
doesn't work very well leaving undesirable traces of the applications in the
system.

Another thing that bugs me; all versions of Girlfriend 1.0 - 2.0
continually pop-up little annoying messages about the advantages of
upgrading to Wife 1.0.

''''''' BUG WARNING '''''''

Wife 1.0 has an undocumented bug. If you try to install Mistress 1.1
before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before doing
the uninstall itself. Then Mistress 1.1 will refuse to install, claiming
insufficient resources.

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