Bug: Logos 4 resource hogging

I am posting this as a bug because this far into the development of Logos 4, it can no longer be ascribed to beta stages. Stable versions have come and gone and though there have been improvements, Logos 4 continues to make capable computers sweat too much.

The "not responding" experience still is a far too common occurrence. I am sure that I don't have the most powerful computer that can be had on the market now, but I think a T6500 (intel core duo) with 4 GB of fast ram and other more than decent hardware should be sufficient not to cough when using Logos 4 and opening several windows within it.

But such is not the case. I have Outlook opened and Chrome and Logos 4. I had one commentary opened, the NASB, one guide and one note file. The software froze. It frequently does in this kind of situation and yet being able to have resources and tools side by side is precisely part of what is so useful in Logos 4. I hear my fan go on and stay on when I start a guide or a search or open a note file.

So it seems to me, as a user not as having knowledge of programming, that the "engine" of Logos 4 was from the start and by and large remains cumbersome in that capacity. I read of other softwares that experience this kind of problem and then they come up with a new version where they completely rewrite the code, experiencing significant performance improvement by changes under the hood rather than in the functionalities. Here is another way to put it: Logos still feels the way Windows Vista did: worked but there were problems. It'd be great to work on the "Windows 7" experience equivalent instead.

Is this already in the plans?

PS: I wonder also whether the beta user addiction helps promote moving Logos 4 in the direction of stability (doing well what it already does) as opposed to looking for new toys (ie, new "exciting" features)...

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Rosie Perera

PS: I wonder also whether the beta user addiction helps promote moving Logos 4 in the direction of stability (doing well what it already does) as opposed to looking for new toys (ie, new "exciting" features)...

You're probably right (I'm assuming your rhetorical question implied that the answer was "no, the reverse"). Guilty as charged.

The things that I still find way too slow and annoying are dropping down a menu that has a dynamically generated list of resources (e.g., the "Search In" menu for Bible Search, and the left side of the right-click menu when you right-click on a single word). I get the spinning "wait" icon in those instances and it takes many seconds to finish. Unacceptable. The UI should have a really snappy feel, and dropdown menus should all appear virtually instantaneously. And I've got a mongo fast machine with a NovaBench score of 1772 (compared to my old laptop which had a score of 197 but still ran Logos)!

Also, updating the library catalog after making a change to tags or a resource name is too slow ("Updating library catalog. List may be incomplete" message appears for 10-15 seconds).

And I get the frozen screen and "Not responding" for 20 seconds or more when I open a medium-sized somewhat complex clippings file (made up of one clipping for each of the tables of contents from the Early Church Fathers volumes, complete with their links) or try to scroll in it past a juncture between clippings. Ditto when I do "close all" when there are a lot of tabs open.

Logos has taken the approach that when people complain in general about speed, they say "we can't do anything about it unless you tell us precisely what action is taking too long for you and send us your log file from doing that action." They do respond with improved performance when we do that, which is good. But I wish they were more proactive about it internally. I'm not sure how many of them are actually using Logos on a day-to-day basis as much as we are, so they might not notice and be frustrated by these things like we are. They see it from under the hood, and spend so much of their time coding and fixing bugs that it must leave little time for actual Bible study using the product. And the ones who are using it extensively as a study platform and would like to work on performance improvement (or fixing annoying little bugs that have been around for several versions) are prevented from doing so by other stuff on their task list that is more important to management.

Ron

[Y]

The fact that Rosie's experience (as far as mentioned times and delays) isn't significantly better than mine, despite her significantly faster computer*, points to the fact that there is still much room for performance optimization.

*I have an Intel Core 2 Duo 3GHz, 8GB RAM, Intel G2 80GB SSD, Radeon 6790 (I think, not in front of it right now), and 64-bit Windows 7

Juanita

The UI should have a really snappy feel, and dropdown menus should all appear virtually instantaneously. And I've got a mongo fast machine with a NovaBench score of 1772 (compared to my old laptop which had a score of 197 but still ran Logos)!

Yikes, Rosie! Thanks for sharing-- what a computer you do have and if you say Logos is not snappy on it, I think I will give up and settle for mediocrity. [:'(]

Rosie Perera

I think I will give up and settle for mediocrity.

That is so sad. I hope we never stop pressuring them to make it better. Remember the parable of the persistent widow? (Luke 18:1-8)

Juanita

Rosie,

I'm 60; I can leave the "fight" up to those of you who have the chutzpah. [:)]

tom

I am somewhat relieved to hear that I am not the only one who is still having this problem, and who is still not happy with performance with L4.

Jack Caviness

The UI should have a really snappy feel, and dropdown menus should all appear virtually instantaneously.

You can make your installation feel much snappier. Run L4 Mac for a day or two. [:D]

mab

It's probably a bit easier to forgive Logos having lived through the days of floppies and dial up. My main issue is that I can't really open too much.

Francis

It's probably a bit easier to forgive Logos having lived through the days of floppies and dial up. My main issue is that I can't really open too much.

Hey Michael, this is really funny: you need to look back to the day of floppies and dial up to feel better about Logos 4 performance issues! I love the point of reference.

LOL

Robert Pavich

The fact that Rosie's experience (as far as mentioned times and delays) isn't significantly better than mine, despite her significantly faster computer*, points to the fact that there is still much room for performance optimization.

*I have an Intel Core 2 Duo 3GHz, 8GB RAM, Intel G2 80GB SSD, Radeon 6790 (I think, not in front of it right now), and 64-bit Windows 7

I think (and I've said this before) that this exact issue is puzzling to me. It's clearly NOT an apples and apples relationship with our machines and Logos...i.e. some users with Cray Supercomputers don't get significantly better performance that those with a 2 year old upper/middle of the road laptop....it just makes no sense...and really points to unknown factors rather than an "optimization" issue...(if we all ran that exact Laptop that runs L4 best we wouldn't be talking about it)

My Dell Laptop is NOT the best on the block...nor is it new but it runs L4 very nicely....and so the fact that Rosie is having spinning pizzas during drop down menus just has me flummoxed...lol.

I have an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz, 6GB RAM, Dell HD (nothing special) , Radeon 4650 and 64-bit Windows 7

And I get no spinning pizzas....

Francis

My Dell Laptop is NOT the best on the block...nor is it new but it runs L4 very nicely....and so the fact that Rosie is having spinning pizzas during drop down menus just has me flummoxed...lol.

I have an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz, 6GB RAM, Dell HD (nothing special) , Radeon 4650 and 64-bit Windows 7

And I get no spinning pizzas....

Robert: are you saying that you can open say a passage guide, a note set or a search, a commentary, a Bible and switch back and forth with no slowdowns at all, no "spinning pizza"?

And if it is your blessed experience, then the question is begging: how many are in your boat vs. those who are not and more importantly, why might this be?

A couple questions come to mind: imported notes have been mentioned in connection with a number of problems: do you have any? Secondly, large note sets have also been noted as a potential source of problems: do you have any? Lastly, I wonder about whether the size of one's library (and index processing) is also a X factor. I have 1,738 resources. Is your library large? Just looking for answers.

Alternatively, perhaps Logos users could collect money to ship your laptop to Logos headquarters for investigation of the miracle computer. What makes your Logos 4 purr? Is it your desktop background? The music you play? The paint in your office?

prespsc

Perhaps someday, all the indexing and auto-populate activity will come from an outsourced Logos data center, where cloud computing will be extremely cheap in the coming years. Only using local resources when Network.GetIsNetworkAvailable() is false.

I am actually considering buying this software, so a test drive would be nice.

Rick

And if it is your blessed experience, then the question is begging: how many are in your boat vs. those who are not and more importantly, why might this be?

The only slow downs or delays that I get are during a Bible search as described here: http://community.logos.com/forums/p/32059/238663.aspx#238663

I sent in a support request asking them to watch the video but after the generic "We got your request" email, no follow-up or anything.

are you saying that you can open say a passage guide, a note set or a search, a commentary, a Bible and switch back and forth with no slowdowns at all, no "spinning pizza"?

Just tested it, along with a few more commentaries open and no slowdowns (spinning pizzas). Instead of a Bible search I done an entire library.

imported notes have been mentioned in connection with a number of problems: do you have any?

Just a few.

Secondly, large note sets have also been noted as a potential source of problems: do you have any?

Not nearly as large as I have heard others describe, so my answer would be no.

Lastly, I wonder about whether the size of one's library

1,417 books showing and several other language (Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic) resources hidden.

I am on my Asus laptop at work right now and the processor is 2.4 GHz with 6 Gig RAM Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

Todd Phillips

Francis,

I have an Core2 Duo T9400 @ 2.53 GHz. with 4GB of RAM, a ATI Mobile Radeon 512MB video card, and 7200RPM Drive. For the most part I find it more than useable and never get spinning pizzas. What does you have for video and hard drive? Those are important too, maybe more so than CPU.

I run a lot of stuff on my computer, and I find I need to manage memory myself. I find that I need to keep memory in use to less than about 2.8G, otherwise everything (not just Logos) starts slowing down. I find that Firefox and Logos are my largest contenders for memory and sometimes I need to restart one or the other to gain back needed memory (Firefox is the usual culprit).

A couple questions come to mind: imported notes have been mentioned in connection with a number of problems: do you have any? Secondly, large note sets have also been noted as a potential source of problems: do you have any? Lastly, I wonder about whether the size of one's library (and index processing) is also a X factor. I have 1,738 resources. Is your library large? Just looking for answers.

I don't use large note files on purpose. I've found that many notes in one file do slow things down. As do many highlights in one resource. Those two areas do need to be tweaked for performance. However I don't think the number of resources affect general performance at all (I have over 2000). All that a large library affects is start-up time (a bit) and indexing time (a lot). I try not to use Logos while it's indexing because everything takes twice as long. It's not unusable, but I'll pause indexing until I'm not using the computer because I need both the memory and CPU for interactive stuff.

Dave Hooton

I think (and I've said this before) that this exact issue is puzzling to me. It's clearly NOT an apples and apples relationship with our machines and Logos.

The change from a 4 yr old Core 2 duo 2.0 GHz with 2 GB memory & Win XP to an i5 2.53 GHz with 4 GB memory & Win 7 has not significantly improved my experience with L4, and it was acceptable with XP! Only Indexing & search speeds show a consistent improvement between my different machines. I have 12 tabs in my Layout but don't experience issues with 15 - 16 tabs (I start to close them above this point).

Significantly, I don't share Rosie's experience with lag on the context menu of my i5 using 4.2a SR-4.

I don't use Notes/Handouts and my Clippings are modest (5 to 8 "medium" frames); so no performance issues there!

Even if Logos can say they have optimized code across the board, I suspect they will still be stuck with WPF & Video card/driver issues impacting lag + the random nature of garbage collection and JIT code generation in .NET ie. MS and NVidia/ATI code, though I expect the latter to improve their code (drivers) much sooner than the former.

So my main issue is with persistent bugs, regression bugs (those fixed in an earlier release!) and a lack of functionality (not necessarily features) when compared with L3.

Robert Pavich

Robert: are you saying that you can open say a passage guide, a note set or a search, a commentary, a Bible and switch back and forth with no slowdowns at all, no "spinning pizza"?

Yes

A couple questions come to mind: imported notes have been mentioned in connection with a number of problems: do you have any?

Nope

Secondly, large note sets have also been noted as a potential source of problems: do you have any?

Probably not large....I do have the content of some web pages in notes so some are large and some are not.

Is your library large?

1,095 with about 500 or so hidden.

Alternatively, perhaps Logos users could collect money to ship your laptop to Logos headquarters for investigation of the miracle computer.

It's not just me....the pattern has been random since the beginning....it's not just that a larger computer runs logos better....I've seen posts where a computer that is a LOT older and less powerful than mine running logos and then there was a guy (don't remember who) who had 12GB ram with an SSD and quad processors...and he was complaining about speed. (as I recall, I could be wrong)

there doesn't seem to be a hard and fast rule....

Peter Covert

The things that I still find way too slow and annoying are dropping down a menu that has a dynamically generated list of resources (e.g., the "Search In" menu for Bible Search, and the left side of the right-click menu when you right-click on a single word). I get the spinning "wait" icon in those instances and it takes many seconds to finish. Unacceptable. The UI should have a really snappy feel, and dropdown menus should all appear virtually instantaneously. And I've got a mongo fast machine with a NovaBench score of 1772 (compared to my old laptop which had a score of 197 but still ran Logos)!

Also, updating the library catalog after making a change to tags or a resource name is too slow ("Updating library catalog. List may be incomplete" message appears for 10-15 seconds).

And I get the frozen screen and "Not responding" for 20 seconds or more when I open a medium-sized somewhat complex clippings file (made up of one clipping for each of the tables of contents from the Early Church Fathers volumes, complete with their links) or try to scroll in it past a juncture between clippings. Ditto when I do "close all" when there are a lot of tabs open.

WOW, this tells us a lot about L4, and it is not good.

Robert Pavich

WOW, this tells us a lot about L4, and it is not good.

Pete,

that's just it....it doesn't.

I have 1/2 the machine that Rosie does and I have no problems and no speed complaints.....

That's only half of the story....the other half is that many users with less machine run just fine.....it's puzzling.

Peter Covert

WOW, this tells us a lot about L4, and it is not good.

Pete,

that's just it....it doesn't.

I have 1/2 the machine that Rosie does and I have no problems and no speed complaints.....

That's only half of the story....the other half is that many users with less machine run just fine.....it's puzzling.

I disagree. There is a real problem if Rosie's computer is having problems. If L4 is the only program that displays this problem, then the problem is in L4.