Bob and the Logos Team,
Let me begin by saying how much I have enjoyed and appreciated your products in the past and that I desire your company to prosper in the future. It is in the spirit of desiring the very best for you that I will be offering some honest feedback. It pains me to say this but so far, my experience with the installation process of Logos 4 ranks among one of my worst software experience, ranking right up there with Windows ME and Vista. The downloading of resources took a better part of two days and then having indexing stop at 5 minutes remaining for over one hour, I like a dummy, clicked YES on the Logos 4 update box, thinking it might be the last step required in the indexing process. This of course required me to start the whole index process over again. In total, it took me almost 3 days to totally install and set up the software! The installation process is the first impression that a person has with software, Window ME and Vista’s reputations were ruined in the first few weeks of their release, it did not matter how many “fixes” came after those first few weeks, the damage was already done. I hope that as I actually use Logos 4 I will have a positive experience, but up until now the experience has all been negative. In the future, let me offer the following suggestions:
1) Release a more complete product: The fact that my sales representative strongly suggested that I not order the DVD’s now, but rather wait for the second pressing speaks volumes. If the release version is so incomplete that I would be wasting my money on purchasing the first run of DVD’s, the program is not ready to be released to the public; it is still just a beta program.
2) Insure that your best customers have the best upgrade experience. The way you did things this time almost guaranteed that users with lots of resources would have a bad upgrade experience. Seeing how many resources I already have, the fact that I was purchasing the Portfolio upgrade and anticipating a high demand on your servers, Logos should have instructed your sales representatives to say something like this. “Mr. Larson seeing how many resources you have and anticipating a heavy demand on our servers I suggest you purchase the DVD rather than the download.” Not to sound too presumptuous, but there were creative ways to get DVD’s in the hands of your best, most loyal customers the day before or the day of the general public release. Your coffee mug special a few years ago really made me feel valued as a customer. Believe me you have more than made up for the expense of shipping that coffee mug to your best costumers by the good will it created. This experience, on the other hand, has been the total opposite, I feel like have been punished for having purchased too many resources--thrown under the bandwidth bus if you will. BTW as I am typing this I am installing on a second computer. It has taken all morning to download 7% of 15.8 GB and if I recall correctly I have a 7.2 GB and a 8.4 GB download to go before indexing can even start. At this rate I have 21 hours in downloading to look forward to!
3) I really do not mind the time required to index, when it worked correctly it only took 6 hours, and that seems like a reasonable payoff for faster searches. However, the fact that I had to restart the whole process is unacceptable. Just a quick review of the forum shows that my experience was not isolated. Simple things like preventing the program from updating while indexing is taking place, warning dialog boxes about not closing Logos or restating you computer until the indexing is finished. Perhaps temporarily preventing MS update from restarting the computer, I suspect that the IE 8 update Tuesday night may have messed up an indexing attempt that started that evening. The bottom line is that you know beforehand that indexing is going to be a huge time commitment for your customers. Do everything you can to protect that commitment.
Please take this feedback as expression of how I feel, not as an accusation about what you did or did not do. If I had a customer who felt as negative as I do about my experience with one of my products I would want to know. I am assuming that you want to know as well. Now that I have everything installed, downloaded and indexed, I can start using the program. I hope I can now offer some positive feedback soon.
In Christ’s Love,
Keith Larson
