Summary:
We are planning to drop support for Windows XP on October 26, 2012; your existing Logos 4 installs will continue to run, but future releases of Logos Bible Software will require Windows Vista SP2 or newer.
This will not disable any XP systems, but future releases of books may use new features or data types only available in newer versions of Logos, and thus will not be usable on Windows XP systems.
Rationale:
Logos 4 depends on a number of Microsoft platform components, including the .NET framework. With the October 26, 2012 release of Windows 8, Microsoft is upgrading the .NET 4 platform to .NET 4.5, which is an "in-place" install replacing .NET 4 (which we're planning to move to for many reasons, including performance and bug fixes).
.NET 4.5 will run on Windows Vista SP2 and later version of Windows, but specifically NOT Windows XP.
October 26, 2012 is the release date for Windows 8; at that point it will be 11 years since Windows XP was released (Oct 25, 2001), and it will be three full generations (Vista, 7, 8) out of date.
Very few Logos users remain on XP, and continuing to support XP in new releases takes development and testing resources, as well as making it more difficult to use other capabilities only offered on newer versions of Windows.
Advance Notice:
We have learned that nobody likes to get "discontinuation" news at the last minute. So this is our first advance notice, and your chance to speak up if there's a really compelling reason we should not drop XP on October 26, 2012. If we don't hear a compelling argument, we'll promote this news via other channels besides the forums soon.
Now I finally have a reason to upgrade.
Wow ... looks like 'the best software ever written' is about to get another kudos: 'Runs on XP!' Woo hoo!!!
January 2012:
Where whims and fancies sit in the seat of judgment, a man’s opinion is only so much wind, therefore take no more notice of it than of the wind whistling through a keyhole. ~ CHS
Bob Pritchett: ...but future releases of books may use new features or data types only available in newer versions of Logos, and thus will not be usable on Windows XP systems
Martin Grainger Dean:Does it mean our old Logos 2 resources
This change has nothing to do with ending support for books; it's about ending support for a version of Windows.
Sounds Good Bob, Thanks for the Heads-up. I understand what you are posting, so we are still good with Win7 – 64 bit, correct/?
******
I just copied this for others to peruse:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/upgrade-offer?ocid=O_WOL_UPG_Home_Upgrade_en-us
Great Bob, it's the right move and I am happy we are moving finally to .NET 4+, that will be great for the product.
For those that would throw market surveys out, you can find one to prove anything. This one says installed base is only 13% XP:
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
And this one is Gartner, one of the prominent researchers not a non-name or un-sourced market survey like some would put out. In this article entitled, "Get off of Windows XP by 2013", they say XP is less than 5% of installed base, and they also mention by early 2014 Microsoft will no longer support XP and will not change that commitment:
http://redmondmag.com/articles/2012/05/22/get-off-windows-xp.aspx
DMB: Wow ... looks like 'the best software ever written' is about to get another kudos: 'Runs on XP!' Woo hoo!!!
Any marketeer touting that in today's world likely gets fired within the month.
I'm using windows 8 running logos 4, It's very good!
Hmm...
XP users still account for 26% of Window's 80% market share, over three times the Mac share of 8.2%.
Granted XP's drop has been increasing to a high of 12% per year, but looking at it 12 months out this still puts XP at double the Mac use which seems to have hit it's peak at 9% earlier this year.
If Windows 8 comes out with enough force to finally dry up the remaining XP user base, this makes sense. But it seems like a heck of a gamble to drop support on one quarter of the Windows machines currently in use.
Just saying.
(OS Platform Statistics)
Awesome! I'm glad to hear this news, and I can't wait for Logos to start taking advantage of the new functionality this opens up for them.
Personally, I can't wait for Logos to drop support for OS X Leopard on the Mac side. I understand why they wouldn't do it just yet, since it would leave PPC users in the dust, but the majority of Mac software dropped support for 10.5 a while ago. I would love to see a version of Logos that takes advantage of Grand Central Dispatch, 64-bit memory allocation, and Lion's fullscreen feature.
Bob Pritchett:Microsoft is upgrading the .NET 4 platform to .NET 4.5,
Looking forward to this! Hopefully any showstopping .NET bugs that affect Logos will be gone by then.
Detailed Search Help
Todd Phillips:Looking forward to this! Hopefully any showstopping .NET bugs that affect Logos will be gone by then.
Everything ever written or spoken in Religion, formatted for Logos Bible Software.
Paul, those stats are for visitors of that particular web site. We have our own stats that reflect actual Logos users, and XP usage is much lower.
'Fired within a month', huh. (That sound curiously familar ... a book title or something maybe).
Ah, but I'm not a marketeer (maybe a mouse-kateer).
But if I could go out and buy a Bible software package with the best resouses, complete with personally managed licenses, installs, does sophosticated searches and cross-linked running on all of the Windows platforms with virtually no support requirements (I've had none going back to Win 3.3).
Yeh, granted that sounds a lot like A-Company. Definitely not the current offering.
Bob Pritchett:We have our own stats that reflect actual Logos users, and XP usage is much lower.
My own anecdotal observation is that Macs would also have a much higher market share among users of Bible software, as opposed to the general public. I'm a Windows person, but I notice that many of the Reformed folks whom I read mention being Mac users, in addition to our friends in this forum. (Clearly, they all have higher disposable income than I.)
HP Pavilion dv6, i3, 4GB RAM, Win 8 Pro (64b)
Samsung Galaxy S 4G - OS ver 2.3.6
Seeing the Kingdom
DMB: 'Fired within a month', huh. (That sound curiously familar ... a book title or something maybe). Ah, but I'm not a marketeer (maybe a mouse-kateer). But if I could go out and buy a Bible software package with the best resouses, complete with personally managed licenses, installs, does sophosticated searches and cross-linked running on all of the Windows platforms with virtually no support requirements (I've had none going back to Win 3.3). Yeh, granted that sounds a lot like A-Company. Definitely not the current offering.
Point taken. DMB does not approve. What else is new. Let's move on.
Todd Phillips:Looking forward to this! Hopefully any show stopping .NET bugs that affect Logos will be gone by then.
I can think of at least two - there are some font bugs that I believe Bradley has said are fixed in 4+, and the crazy way the Home Page gets built (big space gaps etc.) is an issue related to current rev of .NET as well I think.
I would be AWESOME to get a list of outstanding reported problems/issues that moving to the next rev of .NET resolves!
Bob Pritchett: Paul, those stats are for visitors of that particular web site.
Paul, those stats are for visitors of that particular web site.
I know Bob, but W3 is often sited in statistical analysis
I can believe this, given that a very high percentage of XP hold-out is in business.
Looks like I will have to upgrade to a Win 7/8 netbook...