Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance — particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0 In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as NFL 5.0, NBA 3.0. and Golf Clubs 4.1. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I’ve tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail. What can I do?

First keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an Operating System. Please enter the command: “http: I Thought You Loved Me.htm” and try to download Tears 6.2, and don’t forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5. But remember, overuse of the above applications can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0, or Beer 6.1. Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Snoring Loudly Beta.

Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-in-law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources). Also, do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash! Husband 1.0. In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly.

You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Hot Food 3.0 and Lingerie 7.7.

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 Personal Lawyer 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.