P. Keith Larson: I wish that were true of some of the other beta testers. I think you guys need to realize that there is a huge difference in expectation between being a beta tester and being a paid customer. As beta tester you are required to be patent, as a customer "be patent it is being worked on" is not an acceptable answer.
I wish that were true of some of the other beta testers. I think you guys need to realize that there is a huge difference in expectation between being a beta tester and being a paid customer. As beta tester you are required to be patent, as a customer "be patent it is being worked on" is not an acceptable answer.
I know, or hope I know, that this is not in reference to me.
But can I say:
I have a large library which I have paid for over time.
During Beta testing I bought a number of additional resources so that I could test them out during the Beta cycle.
I paid $250 (!!!!) for extra download capacity during part of the Beta testing period because I was on holidays and only had access to a mobile plan and we were being thrown downloads left right and centre and I wanted to continue to be part of the process.
Since program completion I have upgraded from Original Language to Platinum and from Platinum to Portfolio (neither extraordinarily expensive in my case due to the number of resources I already owned)
I am most definitely a paying customer (not a "paid" one). And as any other Beta tester will assure you I was one of the hardest and most insistent of the testers.
I maintained a list of "things I still want to see in 4.0" which reached 50 items a list of suggested Home Page Improvements and a list of needed improvements to the "Cited By" and "Power Lookup" tools.
If I received no response to my queries, every two or three days I would bump my threads....
The only difference between me as a Beta Tester and those who have started using Logos in the last week is that I have done many many more downloads and a lot more indexing, I have gone greyer and lost more hair.
Netbook: EEE PC 1000h - Atom N270 1.6 GHz- 2GB RAM - 320GB HDD (7200 RPM) - Windows XP home SP3 Desktop: Acer Aspire X1800 - Intel Core2Duo E7400 2.8GHz - 4GB RAM - 750GB HDD - Windows 7 Home Premium
Damian McGrath: P. Keith Larson: I wish that were true of some of the other beta testers. I think you guys need to realize that there is a huge difference in expectation between being a beta tester and being a paid customer. As beta tester you are required to be patent, as a customer "be patent it is being worked on" is not an acceptable answer. I know, or hope I know, that this is not in reference to me. But can I say: I have a large library which I have paid for over time. During Beta testing I bought a number of additional resources so that I could test them out during the Beta cycle. I paid $250 (!!!!) for extra download capacity during part of the Beta testing period because I was on holidays and only had access to a mobile plan and we were being thrown downloads left right and centre and I wanted to continue to be part of the process. Since program completion I have upgraded from Original Language to Platinum and from Platinum to Portfolio (neither extraordinarily expensive in my case due to the number of resources I already owned) I am most definitely a paying customer (not a "paid" one). And as any other Beta tester will assure you I was one of the hardest and most insistent of the testers. I maintained a list of "things I still want to see in 4.0" which reached 50 items a list of suggested Home Page Improvements and a list of needed improvements to the "Cited By" and "Power Lookup" tools. If I received no response to my queries, every two or three days I would bump my threads.... The only difference between me as a Beta Tester and those who have started using Logos in the last week is that I have done many many more downloads and a lot more indexing, I have gone greyer and lost more hair.
I was not suggesting that you have not paid for your product or that you were being paid for your participation in the beta program, but rather that as a beta tester you should expect to have a program that might not be feature complete, that runs slowly, that crashes your system, ect. I think most of us who purchased L4 this week had a little higher expectations. I can also understand why you guys are zealous in defending L4, you have invested a lot of time into it. What I don't understand is why some of the beta testers have responded to people this week in a dismissive, condecending and sometimes rude way. I have been using Logos produces from the time they sold books only on 3.5 inch floppies and this week has been the worst experience that I have ever had with a Logos program. Not only has this been a radical shift in the way Logos works, but it has been a radical shift in the quality of my overall user experience. A period of almost three day from the time I click the intall program to the time the indexing had completed was not ever in my wildest imagination something I would have expected when I purchase the program on Monday. I have been in a state of shock and disbelief all week. I really didn't need to hear that I am immature and should have know enough to calculate the size of my L3 library, add the size of the new books, and then google a download calculator. My, what a bad customer I am!
Hey guys, how about we call a halt to the hostilities?
P. Keith Larson:What I don't understand is why some of the beta testers have responded to people this week in a dismissive, condecending and sometimes rude way.
I haven't seen any (known to me) beta tester responses that fit that description. However, I have seen a number of quick answers that could be taken that way because the questions and answers had appeared over and over in the forums. I'd prefer to think that a significant part of what you are complaining about is related to not maintaining two sticky posts - one of known problems and one of commonly asked questions.
Keith, I too have had to sit and sit and sit for downloads and for updates and then for indexing. The great thing is that during all of the waiting my Logos 3 was still available. Logos didn't take anything from me, but rather were sending me the program the quickest way possible. Logos can't do anything about the size of the books. You own a ton of books; praise God for this wealth! They could have avoided some frustration (and caused some more) by simply saying that the only way to install an initial library would be to order DVDs. We'd have to pay for shipping and wait a few days in order to save between a few hours and a few days of downloading. We still get it faster than we would have. Buying the DVD may be the best option for people; please inform your friends of the wait so they can make an informed decision when they upgrade. I do; across the board all opt to download. You probably would have too.
I promise you there will be more frustration; but as one who has been using this (with much frustration, but even more satisfaction) for hours a day for a couple months, I promise you that it will be worth it. In the meantime, you're free to keep using DLS3, and you got a whole bunch more books real cheap in the process. I don't think you will though, because you'll find that with time, that Logos4 was worth the time to download and worth the index. You'll be performing whole-library searches in seconds instead of minutes and wondering how you ever used the old program. As you jump from layout to layout, you'll wonder why they didn't think of this earlier. As upgrades are automatically and constantly pushed to you, you might be annoyed by the interruption, but I have to stop myself often when I receive those upgrades and think of the hours of highly paid coding time that Logos put into that....and they didn't have to. We would have been content with little teeny upgrades to v.3, but Logos spent tons of money to make our access to the books we've bought a more efficient experience (after a long startup) and more mobile experience.
Like Thomas said, I hope this message doesn't sound condescending; it's not intended to be. Just a good reminder and my observations.
God bless.
P. Keith Larson: I was not suggesting that you have not paid for your product or that you were being paid for your participation in the beta program, but rather that as a beta tester you should expect to have a program that might not be feature complete, that runs slowly, that crashes your system, ect. I think most of us who purchased L4 this week had a little higher expectations.
I was not suggesting that you have not paid for your product or that you were being paid for your participation in the beta program, but rather that as a beta tester you should expect to have a program that might not be feature complete, that runs slowly, that crashes your system, ect. I think most of us who purchased L4 this week had a little higher expectations.
Actually I argued quite forcefully that the Beta not go into production.
P. Keith Larson: I can also understand why you guys are zealous in defending L4, you have invested a lot of time into it.
I can also understand why you guys are zealous in defending L4, you have invested a lot of time into it.
Obviously also not a description of me.
P. Keith Larson: What I don't understand is why some of the beta testers have responded to people this week in a dismissive, condecending and sometimes rude way.
What I don't understand is why some of the beta testers have responded to people this week in a dismissive, condecending and sometimes rude way.
I also do not understand this.
P. Keith Larson: A period of almost three day from the time I click the intall program to the time the indexing had completed was not ever in my wildest imagination something I would have expected when I purchase the program on Monday.
A period of almost three day from the time I click the intall program to the time the indexing had completed was not ever in my wildest imagination something I would have expected when I purchase the program on Monday.
I understand completely. As some of us have commented elsewhere, we were told that packages would sell with a precompiled index. This, in fact, is about the only thing that convinced me that the product may be production ready.
But, apparently, they ran out of time...
To return to the first point:
P. Keith Larson: I was not suggesting that you have not paid for your product or that you were being paid for your participation in the beta program
I was not suggesting that you have not paid for your product or that you were being paid for your participation in the beta program
I understood that but you made a very clear distinction between Beta testers and 'paying' customers. I am both...
None of what I have said was in either support or denial of the other issues you have raised.
Keith,
Your major beef is probably with me...I'm sorry brother...it's been a long week...
See this thread that might at least partially explain things
http://community.logos.com/forums/t/3838.aspx
When typing it's hard to see what a person's emotions are and to without using tons of smileys, a phrase like "this is not ready!" or "I've been misled!" come across pretty harshly when really, you're looking for answers to your problems....
I've read"
"I've been ripped off! posts
RIGHT NEXT TO
"Wow! this is great! It's way better than V4" posts
...so clearly, it's subjective, but WHAT REALLY HELPS is just a statement about the issue and resolution, and not a diatribe about how much Logos sucks.
Doesn't that make sense?
Robert Pavich
MS Win 7 Home premium
Intel Core Duo T6600 @ 2.2GHz
6GB Ram
ATI Mobility Raedon 4650 1gb ram
I should never have entered into this. I'm sorry.
I fully understand that when I paid to upgrade and to buy new resources I did so with full knowledge of the limitations and difficulties of 4.0.
I also understand that very many people who upgraded after having seen the publicity materials were not fully aware of what downloading and indexing would involve.
Damian,
well said...
Keith...that goes for me too...I probably have a bit of a skewed point of view also....
I have apologized elsewhere but, understandably, not everyone reads every thread. To the best of my understanding and recollection there is one time I went emotionally overboard and became very rude and non-understanding. There may have been more that I can not recall but for all of them I apologize. I can perfectly understand that L4 is a vastly different model then anyone would expect based on past experience and that can be off-setting. For the 1 time I'm aware of and any other time it might of happened where I failed to be sympathetic and respond appropriately I apologize. I also apologize to Bob and crew because like it or not to a degree my response may reflect on Logos. I'm just fortunate enough that he can't dock my pay. :-)
P. Keith Larson: I add insult to injury. I thought I was ordering a DVD install disk this morning when I downgraded to Platinum, but in closer inspection I see that it is a media only DVD. This is is worthless to, because the install program now automatically starts downloading before you even have a chance to get into Logos for and use the scan command to read the contents of a DVD or external drive.
I add insult to injury. I thought I was ordering a DVD install disk this morning when I downgraded to Platinum, but in closer inspection I see that it is a media only DVD. This is is worthless to, because the install program now automatically starts downloading before you even have a chance to get into Logos for and use the scan command to read the contents of a DVD or external drive.
Only the download install starts automatically downloading books. You'll find that when you install off the DVD (which uses a different installer), it copies the books from the DVD first and opens the program before downloading anything else. At that point, you can set "Automatically download updates" to "No", and/or cancel any automatic download that starts in order to perform a "scan".
Philip Spitzer: I have apologized elsewhere but, understandably, not everyone reads every thread. To the best of my understanding and recollection there is one time I went emotionally overboard and became very rude and non-understanding. There may have been more that I can not recall but for all of them I apologize. I can perfectly understand that L4 is a vastly different model then anyone would expect based on past experience and that can be off-setting. For the 1 time I'm aware of and any other time it might of happened where I failed to be sympathetic and respond appropriately I apologize. I also apologize to Bob and crew because like it or not to a degree my response may reflect on Logos. I'm just fortunate enough that he can't dock my pay. :-)
I too apologize, on further reflection I think we all came into this launch of L4 with different expectations. It has to be disheartening for the staff of Logos and all the beta testers to see some of use reacting so negatively to L4. You have all put in a lot of time and effort trying to make this the best version of Logos ever, and then some people such as I miss the forest for the trees and fixate on one issue. This must have come as a great disappointment. I for my part had my own expectations and have been greatly disappointed this week. This has led me to react to things and write things in a way that was not productive. For this I am sorry.
Bradley Grainger: P. Keith Larson: I add insult to injury. I thought I was ordering a DVD install disk this morning when I downgraded to Platinum, but in closer inspection I see that it is a media only DVD. This is is worthless to, because the install program now automatically starts downloading before you even have a chance to get into Logos for and use the scan command to read the contents of a DVD or external drive. Only the download install starts automatically downloading books. You'll find that when you install off the DVD (which uses a different installer), it copies the books from the DVD first and opens the program before downloading anything else. At that point, you can set "Automatically download updates" to "No", and/or cancel any automatic download that starts in order to perform a "scan".
This is good to know. May I suggest that in the installation process there be a dialog box that asks, "Do you want to scan for resources on an external drive or download them from the internet?"
P. Keith Larson:This is good to know. May I suggest that in the installation process there be a dialog box that asks, "Do you want to scan for resources on an external drive or download them from the internet?"
I would like this feature as well in the web-based installer. It would help those of us who are going around the back of Logos and backing up the resources ourselves. :-)
Check here for Logos 4 missing features: http://www.logos.com/4/missingfeatures
P. Keith Larson:I too apologize, on further reflection I think we all came into this launch of L4 with different expectations. It has to be disheartening for the staff of Logos and all the beta testers to see some of use reacting so negatively to L4. You have all put in a lot of time and effort trying to make this the best version of Logos ever, and then some people such as I miss the forest for the trees and fixate on one issue. This must have come as a great disappointment. I for my part had my own expectations and have been greatly disappointed this week. This has led me to react to things and write things in a way that was not productive. For this I am sorry.
No problem brother...we are all human and are having a loooonnggg week.
For myself, I'm more prone than ever to keep learning this same lesson over and over...
God bless you for your humble heart...
bob
Todd Phillips: P. Keith Larson:This is good to know. May I suggest that in the installation process there be a dialog box that asks, "Do you want to scan for resources on an external drive or download them from the internet?" I would like this feature as well in the web-based installer. It would help those of us who are going around the back of Logos and backing up the resources ourselves. :-)
This is really just carrying over a very good L3 idea. In the last few versions of the install program it asks if there are any more disks.
Such a dialog box could not only as for resources, but indexes as well.