Let's face it, the newly available Husband96 falls short of its anticipated expectations. While my parents had no difficulty saying goodbye to BoyFriend1.0 through BoyFriend4.0, we all agreed that BoyFriend5.0 was, by far, superior to it's predecessors. Better still, they were ecstatic when they heard I planned to upgrade BoyFriend5.0 to Husband96, because it seemed a more stable platform on which to run. However, I have come to the conclusion that Husband96 left behind some of the more appealing features of it prior incarnation as BoyFriend5.0.
Unlike BoyFriend5.0, Husband96 fails to clean up after itself, littering my hard drive with briefs I'd never before seen with BoyFriend5.0. Worse yet, when installed on my portable notebook, which I use when I travel, Husband96 consistently fails with a "path not found" message, and rather than prompting me for direction, the program continues in an infinite loop.
On the up side, Husband96 comes packaged with the coveted NFLatHOME program. However, one note of warning is that once both packages are fully installed, Husband96 is unavailable on Monday nights and all day Sunday. Sadder still, since BoyFriend5.0 had an excellent calendar feature, it is a great disappointment that Husband96 has only minimal calendar functions, and absolutely no capability to remember birthdays and anniversaries.
Perhaps the most irritating flaw I've found with Husband96 is in its voice recognition enhancement. More than once when using this interface, I've found the simplest commands to be ignored. It's as though the program has selective hearing. And still, at other times, commands which seem straightforward enough result in action not anticipated by the user, as if the program hears the language differently than it is spoken.
But then there was the one night I had to uninstall the program to reconfigure my hard drive. I found I couldn't sleep knowing Husband96 wasn't there protecting my data with its highly advanced security functions.
All things considered, Husband96 is better than nothing, and I secretly love knowing I won't have to upgrade again. Sure, I often long for the BoyFriend5.0 I once knew, but since there was no service agreement for the BoyFriend packages, I feel I've made a wise decision in moving up to the fully supported Husband96.
Compliments of Laura Bostian in Kingston