2/24/98

Software Glitches

Dear 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 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 switch to turn the sound off. I just run them separately, and
it works okay.
     
Girlfriend also seems to have a problem co-extisting 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
TokenRing 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 3.0. 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 3.0 still 
installed, but Girlfriend 3.0 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 re-program. 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 so completely 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 ta
ken 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 that 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 also came with MotherlnLaw 1.0, 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'd heard that 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 in its place because of insufficient resources.
     
What do you suggest? Is there a bug-free version of Girlfriend?