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These jokes are of an unknown origin. Feel free to submit corrections or add to the list. I will edit when possible, to improve the flow and correct errors.

Sunday, August 29, 2004

GirlFriend 5.0

Last year, I upgraded my GirlFriend 5.0 to GirlFriend 5.1, which installs itself as 'Fiancee 1.0'. Recently, I upgraded Fiancee 1.0 to Wife 1.0 and it's a real memory hog. It has taken up all my space, and Wife 1.0 must be running before I can do ANYTHING. It is also spawning Child Processes which are further consuming system resources. Some applications, such as PokerNight 10.3, BeerBash 2.5, and PubNight 7.0 are no longer able to run in the system at all. Additional plug-ins were automatically installed, such as Mother-In-Law 55.8, and there is no uninstall feature for these plug-ins. No mention of these behaviors was discussed in the brochures or documentation, although other users have reported similar problems. Because of this, some users that I know have decided to avoid the headaches associated with these upgrades, and simply move from Girlfriend 5.0 to Girlfriend 6.0. Unfortunately, this is not without peril as well, as all traces of Girlfriend 5.0 must be removed from the system before attempting installation of 6.0. Even then, Girlfriend 6.0 will repeatedly run system checks (usually in the background, and often late at night when the system is asleep) to find evidence of previous versions. To cap it off, Girlfriend 6.0 apparently has a nag feature reminding about the advantages of upgrading to Wife 1.0. However, I do like some of the features that you are planning to include in the upcoming Girlfriend 6.1 release:

* A 'Don't remind me again' button * Minimize button * Shutdown feature * An install shield feature so that Girlfriend can be completely uninstalled if necessary (so you don't lose cache and other objects) .

Unfortunately, since I've already upgraded to Wife 1.0, I don't think I will be able to take advantage of any of these new features, unless you decide to include them in the next Mistress release. But, of course, there is a whole raft of problems associated with the use of Mistress 1.0 and Wife 1.0 on the same system -- most notably are system conflicts and continual disk thrashing, which starts shortly after Wife 1.0 detects Mistress 1.0. Interestingly enough, all versions of PersonalLawyer still work fine. Finally, Wife 1.0 apparently deletes all MSMoney files before uninstalling itself; following that, Mistress 1.1 will refuse to install, claiming insufficient resources. I personally find all these new tools and conflicts to be too confusing and time consuming. I'm sticking with Dog 1.0k9. It slobbers and chews up the paper, but all in all these bugs are tolerable. It is simple to operate and we get along fine.

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