POSSIBLE
SOFTWARE CONFLICTS (for the NON-techie)
- Submitted by
Bob Castro
Here is a new
version of an ongoing joke
- which most
of you have never seen.
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 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 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.
I suppose the moral
of the story is: know your system's hardware,
it's software requirements
and compatibilities and be real careful
about what software
you install and when and how you upgrade.
