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 runs fine as long as GirlFriend is run in background mode and the sound is turned off. Unfortunately, I can’t find the switch to turn the sound off. Therefore, I have to run both of them separately.

GirlFriend also seems to have a problem coexisting with my Golf program, often trying to abort Golf with some sort of timing incompatibility. On a positive note, DrinkingBuddies and Golf seem to have no incompatibilities whatsoever.

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, and realized that no one in their right mind is installing new Token Rings, Girlfriend 2.0 uninstalled itself.

Shortly after that, I installed GirlFriend 3.0 beta. Unfortunately, there was a bug in the program and the first time I used it, it gave me a virus. 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. This 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 “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. He can’t load anything else. One of the primary reasons he decided to go with Wife 1.0 was because it came supposedly came bundled with a feature called FreeSexPlus. Well, it turns out the resource requirements 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 uninstalling itself. Then Mistress 1.0 won’t install because of insufficient resources.