Logos, Please do Something

I am a die hard Logos fan and user; it is the best Bible software that is available anywhere. It's power is unmatched among other softwares. I believe in Logos and the people that make it. However, I did want to share an observation with anyone interested in listening. I have been a frequent reader and contributor to the forum, and what I would like Logos to consider is this: If I were NOT a Logos customer and Logos die hard, after reading of the problems that so any people are having with the software, I would NOT be a Logos customer. Praise God, by His grace (and only His grace) I do NOT experience the major problems that other Logos users experience. But if I were NOT already a user and believed in this product, I would not be a user. I have read the forums of other software over the years and these kind of problems do not seem to be reported. Take, for example, the new updates to the Learn Hebrew and Greek with Logos, I went to order the updated DVD and found out that there were corrupted files on the DVD. What is Logos doing to fix this?

As I said, By God's grace, I have not experienced the problems of others, but I am afraid that there is so much negative in the forums. Not from the users, they SHOULD report problems; but I think that it is a danger that SO MANY problems are reported. I realixe that software is apt for problems, but I just Praise God that I do not have the problems I read about here.

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Comments

Robert Pavich

Michael...

I don't represent Logos...I'm a user just like you...so take my comments with that in mind.

Logos has no more issues than any other software that I've come across...they're just more open about it...that's all.

That could be seen as a negative or positive. They could have held this code for a year while they tinkered with it...and we would not have had any input into the final product, but they took the "concurrent engineering" type of approach and I believe that the software is better for it.

I can see your point, and I guess they are willing to take that risk because of the payoff.

Just my thoughts.

Pastor Michael Huffman

Thanks Robert,

Guess I am having an off day. As I said I am thankful for Logos and I am very thankful that I do not experience the problems that many report. It just seems that the more updates they have they keep having the same problems. I think they need to concentrate on getting the repeated problems fixed, I keep seeing the reoccuring problems with each update. My only worry is that this would hinder future users of the Best Software available. But as I said, I am very thankful that I do not see the same problems.

Pastor Michael Huffman

Let me say that I say these things with concern as a Logos Ambassador.

Jim VanSchoonhoven

I agree with your concern on any given day it is amazing how many errors are reported on the site. I also disagree with the comment that other software companies have as many issues as Logos has this last year!

For one thing this software has been going through major reworking this last year, most other programs do not do it this way. For another point there is no other software that does anywhere near as many things as Logos does, as a result of that, it would be normal for Logos users to have a few more problems.

However, if we look back to the last year of libronix 3, a person will notice the software didn't have any more problems then other software companies.

Hopefully in the next 6 months things will settle down here and there will not be so many problems either daily or weekly. If not Logos will have problems in keeping us believing in them.

I have had a number of bad experiences with Logos software this last year, but before there was seldom ever a problem, I still remember those days and hope to see them back soon!

In Christ,

Jim

Robert Pavich

Let me say that I say these things with concern as a Logos Ambassador.

Understood brother....no prob....

Michael Dixon

Logos is fortunate that its user base is one of the best possible, i mean - could you ask for a better demographic than bible students and pastors? Perhaps this is why Logos gets away with things other companies can not. Like:

Performance. I agree with the issues here. I am a developer, so I use a lot of software, and see software launches all the time. I launch my own. Logos has a lot of problems, very much on the high side. Period. Actually, so many problems that it appears to be a Beta and not a full release. Personally, I haven't been fortunate. It has given me a ton of issues, including running my processors at 100% for 2 days (even though Logos was closed), which fried my macbook pro - which btw logos has been nice enough to not contact me back about. It is also very, very slow. Slower than it has to be. I have a 3.0g Quad Core processor, SSD, and 12gb of ram. Logos is by far thew slowest thing on my computer, and it is slow on my computer. Which is crazy considering my hardware - it has to be the programming. I would overlook these issues, if it were not for the fact that I believe these issues have arisen because Logos was coding (actually its complete business model now) to prevent
theft of its products, and not for performance.

Price. Yes their software is free, but their books aren't. I saw a book on Logos today that cost 80.00. The ebook through Google Books cost 30. Paperback cost 14. Logos is charging outrageous prices for books to be used with their reader. As a comparison, view adobe creative suite master collection, comprised of 10 or so top of the line, major applications (with none of the bugs). Compare Apple's logic studio. Compare any major application. These are major program suites, which working cost less than Logos' one program - i say working, because without books, logos does not do anything. Cost comparisons show Logos is way over the line with their pricing.

I have it worse than some, but I am not happy with my purchase without the bugs and lack of support. I am not happy with what appears to have been a decent company taken over by marketers. It seems they have gotten greedy. I am not happy with the pricing, or performance. I wish, honestly, I could get a refund and use my 1200.00(!!!) to go in another direction - oh and i want my macbook pro back.

Mark Barnes

I have it worse than some, but I am not happy with my purchase without the bugs and lack of support. I am not happy with what appears to have been a decent company taken over by marketers. It seems they have gotten greedy. I am not happy with the pricing, or performance. I wish, honestly, I could get a refund and use my 1200.00(!!!) to go in another direction - oh and i want my macbook pro back.

There's three issues you raise here:

Performance/stability: I'm not a Mac user, so can't comment on the stability or otherwise of the app on the Mac. Nor can I comment on your specific with your processor, as I don't think it's one that you've tried to diagnose here in the forum. (Though I'm sure you're aware that software can't break hardware, unless there's an underlying hardware issue.) I think it's fair to say that generally the developers have not been concentrating on performance, so there is room for improvement here.

Cost: Some individual Logos resources are overpriced. A very small percentage are very overpriced. Obviously then, I don't buy those resources. But there are multiple reasons for Logos resources tending to be more expensive than other versions. But this is often mitigated through academic discounts, frequent sales, the prepub scheme, etc. I'm sure that for every example you could give of a paper-book being significantly cheaper, I could give an example of a Logos book being significantly cheaper. Moreover, it's often the most useful Logos books that are cheapest.

Refund: I don't think better Bible study software than Logos exists, but if you want a refund, I'm sure you could get one if you call CS.

Victor Ulloa M.

While you can see a big quantity of error reports as negative issue, I think is the ratio between errors and solutions what counts.

I've had some troubles with L4 and, for the time being, always had received a response.

I'm an IT professional and I think the opposite situation is really worse: I recently bought a development software: the forums get 5 or 6 messages a day (so I thought : "oops... so few programmers are using this tool?") and many, many messages has 0 responses ("oops again: tech support is weak and slow?").

I'm not 100% happy with L4. But Logos commitment is really valuable to me. As long as they respond, the activity in the forums seems to me that the product is alive and evolving...

Just my two cents...

John Sheeley

Maybe I am totally missing the boat here, but I've been using this software (Scholar's Library LE) for about six months and find it to be completely amazing. I've used it for sermon prep, seminary research, etc. and do not see the magnitude of problems others seem to be having. Other than a few minor and sporadic glitches (mistaken link, spelling error), my software is performing quite well and I find the product more than acceptable.

As for pricing, I cannot speak of all the resources, but I've added several books onto my package that were equivalent in price to Amazon and the Seminary book store price. The bonus of putting them on here is that I can now easily incorporate them into my study and it makes writing papers a breeze.

I hate to be too blunt, but it seems to me that many of the complaints on here sound a bit over the top. I guess I just happened to get one of the good copies of software.

Milford Charles Murray

Maybe I am totally missing the boat here, but I've been using this software (Scholar's Library LE) for about six months and find it to be completely amazing. I've used it for sermon prep, seminary research, etc. and do not see the magnitude of problems others seem to be having. Other than a few minor and sporadic glitches (mistaken link, spelling error), my software is performing quite well and I find the product more than acceptable.

As for pricing, I cannot speak of all the resources, but I've added several books onto my package that were equivalent in price to Amazon and the Seminary book store price. The bonus of putting them on here is that I can now easily incorporate them into my study and it makes writing papers a breeze.

I hate to be too blunt, but it seems to me that many of the complaints on here sound a bit over the top. I guess I just happened to get one of the good copies of software.

Peace to you, John! And Joy in the Lord! *smile*

I concur with your every word. Completely amazing! Indeed!

Along with you, I honestly do not understand some of the terrible negativity that I've seen on these Forums. Logos 3 was great! Logos 4 is more than magnifent!

Some posters even seem angry at Logos, and I've never been able to figure out why.

George Somsel

Along with you, I honestly do not understand some of the terrible negativity that I've seen on these Forums. Logos 3 was great! Logos 4 is more than magnifent!

Some posters even seem angry at Logos, and I've never been able to figure out why.

It really shouldn't be too difficult to figure out. The old story is that after church everyone has roast Dominie for dinner. It seems to be a church tradition, and Logos tends to be used by church people.

Matthew C Jones

do not see the magnitude of problems others seem to be having.

One reason there appears to be a lot of complaints with the Logos software is the forum's inclusion of beta tester's comments and bug reports. It had been suggested by several to separate the general forum posts from the beta program. Logos has chosen to keep them all together on one forum and to keep them public and transparent. I won't second guess their decision in this matter.

A second reason for the volume of complaints is the repetition of the same single issue by many different posters as well as the repetition of the same complaint (over & over) by one individual poster. Some topics of complaint are not "bugs" at all. They are more akin to fashion disagreements. Some do not like the Homepage of Logos 4, some do not like it syncing with the servers, some do not want alternative denominational materials included in their base package. The running "bug" tally does not include the fashion wars, of course. [8-)]

Yes John, it sounds like you got a good copy of Logos. I got the other good copy. The other 754, 982 Logos users must be jealous.

Shawn Drewett

This issue is DEFINITELY split on the forums. In other words there are valid and emotional arguments on both sides. It is not an issue that will simply go away. In my case, it took me quite a while to regret investing so much money in Logos. In other words, I can't get my money back. I'm in a place where I have no choice but to learn to live with the countless bugs and slowness of the program. There is no other alternative, unless I want to lose most of what I've invested.............which is a lot of money.

Milford Charles Murray

Peace, Shawn! *smile*

You DO have Logos 3.0g! A very remarkable Bible Software indeed! You do not have to get "emotional" about Logos 4.

MJ. Smith

This issue is DEFINITELY split on the forums.

Part of the reason it splits the forum, is the relative lack of content - beginning with the title "Logos, Please do Something" ... well they are doing something just not the something wanted by the person writing the title. If Logos staff took a day off for twiddling thumbs they would meet the request of the title.

The slowness of the program is also too vague to be corrected. Where one experiences the slowness and on what platform are minimum requirements for Logos to correct the slowness ... we know from the forums that some people still have unacceptable performance levels - most do not. Logos cannot text every possible combination of hardware, operating system, concurrent processes, etc. They are dependent upon us to say that note files of such and such a size or multiple linked sets of ... cause performance problems. Can you speed this or that up? Or when we can't determine why we experience slowness, call Customer service and let them see what you are seeing.

Countless bugs? I really doubt this is other than hyperbole. Yes, there are more bugs than I would like - then I do have a perfectionist side to me. But the repair of the bugs have to be prioritized by their effect on the user. We are the only ones who can tell Logos which ones they need to get on - pronto. From the bug repair lists in the last few releases we can see that Logos is making significant progress on the errors that most effect users.

Make a list of your top ten irritants / bugs/ performance issues / missing features and post it or email Logos. There is significant evidence that if we hold up our side or the correction / enhancement project, they will too.

Lest you think that I'm a starry-eyed Logos fan, remember I am one who needs a better implementation of lectionaries, prayer lists and notes before I can really use Logos for my primary purposes; I also have a strong need to be able to build (and share) user content - parallels, lectionaries, timelines, PBB's just to get back the functions I did on Logos 3.

John Sheeley

Excellent Matthew C Jones!

John Sheeley

Thank you Mr Murray, and Peace to you!

Richard Koons

Yes I agree I purchase Logos 4 plat back last Jan dumped a lot of money into logos on a six month time frame. At first the software was unusable I do mean unusable which points to it not being ready for prime-time today I enjoy the software and it has become my main program for bible study. I know the thought it isn't a buggy as other software (but in fact in many ways it was worse) you couldn't use it out of the box the application hung took too long to toggle through the bible etc. Of course now it is fine and meets my expectation but the first couple of months were hell to say the least. It is ok to have bugs we expect this but in a truth at first Logos 4 was little better than a beta. For the future I think it would be a wise decision not to launch a future application so fast or at the least wait until the core functionality is working without flaws tha being said I am writing mainly from a quality control opinion Logos 4 is worth the money and an essentail tool I feel for bible study as well as a study into the ancient world in general.

Ingemar "Lloyd" Woods

I agree my computer is being forced to index for 45 hours! This is insane. it seems my Logos has downloads every time a start it. I am not satisfied at all. I am not to ga ga over Logos to tell the truth this is not as good as everyone keeps claiming on this forum.

Mark Barnes

I agree my computer is being forced to index for 45 hours! This is insane. it seems my Logos has downloads every time a start it. I am not satisfied at all. I am not to ga ga over Logos to tell the truth this is not as good as everyone keeps claiming on this forum.

Ingemar, if you can describe your problem in a bit more detail in a new thread (see "How to ask for help" below), we'll see if we can help.

Ingemar "Lloyd" Woods

Mark,

Over the last few days I have been required to download large updates. Tonight it stated that it would take 46 hours . However, it completed and indexed in about 4 or so hours. I am running a 2 GB RAM, Anthlon X 2. I had some problems before but have had a lot of problems recently problems with excessive updates and indexing. I have the scholars silver. Any advice is appreciated. Thank you and God bless you.