It‘s my impression that Logos users might experience more of this syndrome than say people using other kind of Bible softwares. But I don’t have the data points.
So do/did you suffered from this? Can you share how, and how you combat with this?
Orthodox Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."
But my book shelves were never this neat......
There are a lot of names and degrees of gear acquisition syndrome. Unchecked and to the extreme these can become idols of the heart or addictions. A few practical things that you might try:
1) avoid frequent checks of the forums if you find yourself here looking for sales and rationale to buy more stuff
2) set a budget and stick to it
3) use a spouse or accountability partner to discuss all purchases in advance
4) I ask myself, what do I want out of this resource?
Bryce Hufford: There are a lot of names and degrees of gear acquisition syndrome. Unchecked and to the extreme these can become idols of the heart or addictions. A few practical things that you might try: 1) avoid frequent checks of the forums if you find yourself here looking for sales and rationale to buy more stuff 2) set a budget and stick to it 3) use a spouse or accountability partner to discuss all purchases in advance
I'd disagree with #1 ... opportune purchasing keeps Logos affordable (of course applying #2-4). I always feel bad for those new to Logos, where a lot of good sales are water under the bridge.
Plus (from a sale just today!):
"They allow you to unlock the significance, meaning, and nuances of words in the New Testament without having to study Hebrew or Greek!"
This alone saves you from tons and tons of OL books! So many folks wasted so much money on NT hebrew (greek too).
"God will save his fallen angels and their broken wings He'll mend."
Kolen Cheung: It‘s my impression that Logos users might experience more of this syndrome than say people using other kind of Bible softwares. But I don’t have the data points. So do/did you suffered from this? Can you share how, and how you combat with this?
See this thread where this question was discussed extensively - https://community.logos.com/forums/t/117974.aspx
Making Disciples! Logos Ecosystem = Logos8 on Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (Win10), Android app on tablet, FSB on iPhone, [deprecated] Windows App, Proclaim, Faithlife.com, FaithlifeTV via Connect subscription.
While everyone else seems to have focused on the acquisition of more resources for their libraries, I took your meaning to be more along the lines of being hardware related: A laptop for mobile reading/studying, a SmartPhone for when a laptop isn't quite mobile enough, a tablet when a phone isn't quite large enough but a laptop is to much trouble, and of course a fully operational battle station with multiple monitors, cordless keyboard/mouse, redundant RAID0 NVMe SSD drives and a top of the line graphics card.
Yes. I suffer from the addiction. Mostly, I merely lust after new gadgetry rather than buying it.... still I worry that I may be committing hardware adultery even if I don't actually indulge.
"I read dead people..."
Denise:I'd disagree with #1 ... opportune purchasing keeps Logos affordable (of course applying #2-4). I always feel bad for those new to Logos, where a lot of good sales are water under the bridge.
I totally agree with both things you are saying here.
Using adventure and community to challenge young people to continually say "yes" to God
David Thomas:See this thread where this question was discussed extensively - https://community.logos.com/forums/t/117974.aspx
Thanks for the link. However the focus here is different. This thread is specifically focused on Logos' effect on us.
Just to clarify a bit more,
and many more examples. But I think the main point is while its bundling/packaging strategy can help us save a lot potentially, it also trained us to not think in terms of what resources we truly need/want, but the cheapest way to have what we need and then some more. And this could results in impulse buying of great deal, losing track of if one really need it in the first place, or over-budget resulting in suffering of present-self trading for potential saving for future-self. Something alone these lines.
Kolen Cheung:That makes Logos users trained to always look out for a bigger bundle for potential saving, not what they want/need.
Kolen, I have not been thus trained. I resist being bundled into Bundleization.
Brother Mark: While everyone else seems to have focused on the acquisition of more resources for their libraries, I took your meaning to be more along the lines of being hardware related: A laptop for mobile reading/studying, a SmartPhone for when a laptop isn't quite mobile enough, a tablet when a phone isn't quite large enough but a laptop is to much trouble, and of course a fully operational battle station with multiple monitors, cordless keyboard/mouse, redundant RAID0 NVMe SSD drives and a top of the line graphics card. Yes. I suffer from the addiction. Mostly, I merely lust after new gadgetry rather than buying it.... still I worry that I may be committing hardware adultery even if I don't actually indulge.
While I wasn't thinking in terms of that, what you said is also true.
I often tell this story: the first gaming laptop I bought is for running Logos 4, not PC games! (After know that it requires a dGPU to run well. Back then no SSD.)And then I switched to MacBook Pro 13" knowing that Logos then started to support Mac, and thinking being MacBook Pro with fast SSD must run Logos faster. (Not true because Logos wasn't optimized for Mac yet back then.)Then I found out MBP 13" only has 2 cores, even if it was i7, and no dGPU. And only MBP 15" comes with 4 cores and dGPU, I pulled my trigger to buy a MacBook Pro 15", partly for Logos and partly for running Adobe softwares.Now there's the latest MBP 15" has 6 cores and DDR4 RAM, tempting but not tempted yet.
I also bought the first iPad on day 1 it launches thinking that it is an amazing reading tablet for my research papers and Logos titles. There came the first retina iPad, I upgrade for its crispness to read and view photos. When the bigger 12.9" iPad Pro came out, I upgraded again for the larger screen size, which finally on par with a letter size.
Same with iPhone, start with iPhone 4, iPhone 5 bigger screen, switch; iPhone 6 Plus even bigger screen, switch; iPhone XR even bigger screen, switch. Bigger is better for reading. (Xs Max is tempting but XR is close enough and LCD is actually better for reading. LED better for watching videos or photos.)
So yes, I completely understand what you mean and thank you for making me aware for that.
By the way, regarding putting 2 SSDs in RAID0, it actually will slows things down. And I did make the same mistake when I first built a fast desktop (I skipped this above). The reason is, SSD's performance is basically comes from queue depth and so a good controller is needed to maximize the use of that (for load balancing in complex workloads, also for wear balancing). So putting 2 in RAID0 actually (most of the time) hurt actual performance due to that extra overhead before the controller see the stuffs. Also software RAID can be taxing and has performance issues (which I used), and hardware RAID comes with another set of problems.
Kolen Cheung:So do/did you suffered from this? Can you share how, and how you combat with this?
Short answer: Yes.
The *best* way to avoid it is to stay the heck away from these forums. Well-meaning folks here strongly encourage binge purchases. Nothing nefarious, just the nature of the beast (so to speak). Someone gets excited about (say) the Complete Works of Hansard Knollys and six other folks chime in they bought it while the gettin' was good, and pretty soon you are the proud owner of something you'll probably never read and will likely never show up in a search result.
I've had to take a six- to nine-month hiatus from the forums on a couple occasions. You can see my input on the previous-linked thread as well.
I've compared this thing (Logos software) to golf clubs in the past. A marginal golfer will often fall for buying a new nine-hundred dollar driver, thinking with it he or she can hit a ball farther, straighter. All the new driver really accomplishes is, the golfer hits the ball poorly with a much thinner wallet.
If you buy Logos resources thinking the purchase will make you a better bible scholar, or more spiritual, or cure your porn addiction or you drinking problem or your rotten marriage, or fix whatever other spiritual issues you have, you'll end up with the same issues and a thinner wallet. The solution to your problems are not found in buying another sixteenth-century puritan author's complete works.
My thanks to the various MVPs. Without them Logos would have died early. They were the only real help available.
Faithlife Corp. owes the MVPs free resources for life.
Doc B: If you buy Logos resources thinking the purchase will make you a better bible scholar, or more spiritual, or cure your porn addiction or you drinking problem or your rotten marriage, or fix whatever other spiritual issues you have, you'll end up with the same issues and a thinner wallet. The solution to your problems are not found in buying another sixteenth-century puritan author's complete works.
A fair warning, although the same should be said for the latest and greatest scholarship!
Doc B:I've had to take a six- to nine-month hiatus from the forums on a couple occasions. You can see my input on the previous-linked thread as well.
I've tried that too, albeit for longer. And when I came back recently I felt like I missed so much. Had I been more active I'd have much more free/cheap resources or great deals.
So right now I'm exploring about this dilemma—stay tuned and have a lot of great deals to save for the future, or left behind and come back to regret missing so much deals and either keep waiting for deals again or wallet suffer.
(I did subscribed to all Logos RSSes including those free title posts and read them every day for the past few years. But I've found out they have much more happening behind the scene that those posts won't tell you about. While in forum/Faihlife social network people will.)
This has actually been on my mind recently. Including a competing biblical software, I think I have approx. 1,718 resources in software (not including paper books, journals, etc.).
However, the vast majority of those were free and I only have them on hand for research papers, etc., as references to which I can appeal (I absolutely love the fact that Logos carries over the resource details in copy-paste). Indeed, I can still recall having hard-book lexicons, etc. spread all over the room while I manually copied from them while writing papers, etc. 😡😤.
I think at this point there’s really no need for anything else - and I suspect my wife agrees 😏.
Good thread topic.
https://apostolicacademics.com/
Next wave of GAS is coming, as the Logos March Madness is ending. Soon the all the discount rates will be settled.
The biggest madness/matchup is present-self vs. future-self: do I buy now to save for the future or save now and risk spending more later?
Did anyone check what they bought from March Madness in previous years? Did you find something you bought but never used?