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If you are thinking of a change of software, read this first:
There are a lot of negative remarks on the net concerning the program "GirlFriend", and I tried to make a selection of the best hints I found and put them all in one new file.
*GirlFriend conflicts with DrinkingBuddies 1.0 when run in a multi-level system! DrinkingBuddies will not crash when run as stand alone or with Girlfriend only in background mode and the sound is turned off. The problem is that in the manual are absolutely no hints about the hotkeys to do that, so just run them seperately, and it works o.k.
*Girlfriend also seems to have a problem coexisting with Golf programs, often trying to abort Golf with some sort of timer incompatibility.
*Apparently you can not upgrade from GirlFriend 3.0 to GirlFriend 4.0 ! You must uninstall GirlFriend 3.0 first, otherwise the two versions of GirlFriend will have conflicts over shared use of the I/O port. Other users told me that this is a long-standing, well known problem. That explains what happened to versions 1 and 2.
*To make matters worse, the uninstall program for GirlFriend 3.0 doesn't work very well, leaving undesirable traces of the application in the system.
*I tried running GirlFriend 4.0 with GirlFriend 3.0 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.
*A friend of mine who has experience with GirlFriend 3.0 told me that I probably didn't have enough cache to run GirlFriend and it would require a Token Ring to run Girlfriend 4.0 properly. He was right, as soon as I purged my cache, GirlFriend 3.0 uninstalled itself.
*Shortly after that, I installed GirlFriend 5.0 beta. All the bugs were supposed to be gone, but 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 5.1 official version. This time I used SCSI probe first and installed a virus protection program.This version of GirlFriend works pretty well, but there are still some problems: Like all versions of GirlFriend, it is written in some obscure language that I can not understand, much less the 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 never liked how GirlFriend is totally "object-orientated"
*Another identified problem is that all versions of GirlFriend have annoying little X-active messages about the advantages of upgrading to GirlFriendPlus 1.0 which is a Terminate and Stay Resident version of GirlFriend.
*A friend of mine discovered that GirlFriendPlus 1.0 expires within one 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 leaving few system resources for other applications.
*All users should be aware that 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. Once that happened, Mistress 1.1 won't install and you will get an "insufficient resources" error message. To avoid the above mentioned bug, try to install Mistress 1.1 on a different system and NEVER run any file transfer applications between the two systems.
*Wife 1.0 is also spawning child-processes which are further consuming valuable resources. No mention of this particular phenomenon was included in the product documentation, though other users have informed me that this is to be expected due to the nature of the application.
*Not only that, Wife 1.0 installs itself so that it is always launched at system initialization where it can monitor all other system activity (even worse then GirlFriend) Some applications as PokerNite 10.3, Bachelor Party 2.5 and Pubnite 7.0 are no longer able to run on the system at all, causing the system to lockup when launched (even though the applications worked fine before!)
*One of the reasons my friend decided to upgrade to Wife 1.0 was because it came bundled with FreeSexPlus 1.0. Well, it turns out that the resource allocation table module of Wife 1.0 sometimes prohibits access to FreeSexPlus 1.0, particularly with the new Plug-Ins he wanted to try.
*Wife 1.0 provides no installation options. Thus, the installation of undesired plug-ins such as Mother-In-Law 55.8 (which has an automatic pop up feature you can't turn off) and Brother-In-Law Beta are unavoidable. Also, system performance seems to diminish with each passing day.
** A "don't remind me again" button
** Minimize button
** Ability to delete the "not today, I have headache" file
** An install feature that provides an option to uninstall Wife 2.0 without loss of other system resources.
** An option to run the network driver in "promiscuous mode" allowing the system's hardware probe feature to be much more effective.
With thanks to the authors of the original articles,Robert Wunderlich and Venetia Bird