Logos, Please do Something

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.

I sure do miss the speed (other than searching) of the old L3 program! L4 is VERY sluggish in every other way. I do believe it is the best however.

I realize it performs slower/faster on different systems. Nevertheless, I have 3 GB Ram,  2.2 GHz processing speed Intel Pentium Dual Core.  320 GB hard drive. It drags for the most part except for searching.

I've had some problems, but CS or others on the forums have always got back to me very quickly and answered my questions or enabled me to solve the problems.  The programme sometimes takes a few seconds to do things, but I don't rush into Bible study at 100 mph!  And  it's much quicker to wait for Logos than to get out an armful of commentaries and leaf through them!

I use a lot of software, and I don't there there are any more problems reported on this forum than on others, when you remember that:

• Logos encourages people to use the forums, and they are very well used.
• Logos has hundreds of thousands of customers.
• The majority of the bugs reported in Logos are in beta versions, not release versions.
• Many of the problems reported in release versions of Logos are not bugs, but user errors, faulty hardware, underlying Windows problems and the like.

At random, I've gone to another forum for software that I use (called Clear Context). In the first page of posts listed were these:

• CC Hangs When Sending MSG on Windows 7
  
• Issues assigning project possible timeout
  
• Project not in drop down for known sender/receiver
  
• Migration to new laptop \\ Projects missed
  
• Version 5.2 is not color coding messages
  
• Can't get stats to work
  
• Dashboard hangs
  
• Form Region "Clearcontext.7" cannot be opened.
  
• CC has stopped working correctly
  
• Clear Context folders set up in the wrong exchange account
  
• No Add-In available after install
  
• Clearcontext oes not work while access from appl
  
• Clear Context Errors when opening Outlook
  
• Duplicate Emails
  
• ClearCOntext.RelatedView error
  
• Filing suggestions/issues
  
• Cannot revert to 4.6
  
• Clearcontext stopped working after updgrading to 5.1
  

Now this is a piece of software that I use every day, and rarely have problems with. But many people report problems on the forum - just like Logos. In fact, the percentage of posts describing problems is probably higher there than it is here. I expect that's probably the same for pretty much any complex software that has an active company-supported forum. Fully 29% of posts in the Accordance forum are in the Bugs or Technical Support forums.

Mark Barnes said:

But many people report problems on the forum - just like Logos. In fact, the percentage of posts describing problems is probably higher there than it is here. I expect that's probably the same for pretty much any complex software that has an active company-supported forum. Fully 29% of posts in the Accordance forum are in the Bugs or Technical Support forums.

Thanks for pointing that out Mark.  

Forums by nature tend to hold problems and solutions.  As a result more posts will house issues than they will random forum speak.  

However, since we don't have an official forum for random forum speak - we (I) tend to inject it into regular threads. 

On Topic: Forums tend to be a place for worse case scenarios.  It's been that way in every forum I've ever participated in; and that is many.

So let me ask this, do you guys notice a difference in the number of problems between the last year, in Libronix 3 and this year in Logos 4?  From the sound of your comments it is like you do not see a difference.  I do and I think once things are figured out better, things will get better again. I think Michael has a valid concern and if I didn't have some time with Logos before this release, I would be very concerned.

I also want to comment from the point of view of someone that has spent a lot of time teaching believers how to use other bible software programs to, the number of problems in Logos this year has been much higher than other programs, but in the years before that Logos fit in well with everybody else.

To go along with this observation, not having some key features has made it harder to point others to Logos too, but I think most of these issues will be fixed in the next 6 months and I have seen improvement in the program over the last six months, things are headed in the right direction, but there has been serious problems.  And Logos has said so to me and I believe they said so on these message boards.  That is part of the reason I believe they will keep on improving!

I know from my time as a pro coach that I see things differently than most, but at least in coaching you have to know what is being done wrong in order to improve.  Making errors is a way of life, admitting those errors and working to fix them determines how well you will live that life. 

I think one of the problems on this forum is that some people do not want to admit problems concerning Logos, and they take any mention of a Logos problem as being harmful to Logos, but I think that is wrong.

In Christ,

Jim VanSchoonhoven

Logos slow? Yes. Logos buggy? Yes.

 It's unfortunate that I often resort to the competition when I am discussing our Lord's word with fellow believers because of its sporadic but exaggerated sluggishness. Although, when speed and stability are not issues, such as when I am in the program alone, I recognize for all the shortcomings of the back-end of logos
that it really is the premiere bible software in the industry. The front-end that we users get to see just shows that it is far above the competition.

They just need to totally clean up there mess with the back-end, and it is a mess. As long as they deliver with the improvements in performance and stability, I am quite willing to stick it out to see these improvements.

At this point it's Logos' decision in their direction. Deliver or fade away.

Michael Huffman said:

I must say I disagree with Mark that most of the problems are from beta's, because most people are this forum are probably NOT beat testers or users.

To clarify, I said that most of the bugs were from betas, not most of the problems. I spend a fair amount of time helping users through problems in the Logos 4 forum, and I can honestly say that the vast majority of those that I work through are not caused by Logos bugs.

Michael Huffman said:

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.

Michael Huffman said:

Well, it performs very, very well on my laptop.

Let me see if I get this right:

   1. You just said you personally have not experienced problems.
   2. You say the forums are full of negative reports
   3. You say Logos performs well on your laptop.

I've been taught this is called "taking up offenses."   So why be a standard bearer for unhappy users? You are leading them to a dry well. 

Michael Huffman said:

Nothing gets fixed if people get on the defense when something is mentioned is wrong.

If you had hurtful but true information about one of my daughters and chose to walk down the street door-to-door telling everyone that information to "help" my family; I would really question your (integrity/wisdom/motive/charity.)
Matthew 18:15 seems to be more "helpful" than soliciting gripes. Contacting Logos directly about issues you have is the best way to get resolution, if that is what you really want.

Michael Huffman said:

Nothing gets fixed if people get on the defense when something is mentioned is wrong.

I don't know whether I'm one whom you have in mind here, but it is something I and some of the other MVPs have been accused of by others!! But who it's directed at isn't important and doesn't matter. There are some of us on this forum (and I'm one!) whose natural instinct when a problem is described is: "let's fix it!". To do so, we need to carefully analyse what the problem is, what's causing the problem, and whether it requires a software fix, or a workaround, or both.

A recent example of that analysis would be a user who found Collections slow: http://community.logos.com/forums/p/26747/197580.aspx#197580

Now, we could have offered sympathy: Yes, collections are sometimes slow. Isn't that a pain! Logos 3 was never like this!!! But it wouldn't have helped. So instead we suggested some optimisations the user could perform (workarounds you might say), which helped significantly.

But just as importantly, you'll find several posts of mine and others on the beta forum where we use our experience in helping other users to point out bugs and suggest ways of improvements. Sometimes these are extremely detailed (and you might say critical). Here's two examples (http://community.logos.com/forums/t/17900.aspx, http://community.logos.com/forums/t/23604.aspx). I use these examples, because they (and similar posts from other users) have led to significant improvements, in the former case in the next version which none of us have seen, in the latter in 4.2.

I guess what I'm saying is that speaking personally, in the "Logos 4" forum I concentrate on helping users to make the most of the software as it currently stands, whereas in the beta forum I concentrate on pointing out problems and helping/encouraging Logos to find solutions. If you don't regularly read the beta forum you may not realise that some of the 'defenders' of Logos are actually sometimes pretty critical too.

Tom, your short post speaks more than all of the others combined in this thread.

tom collinge said:

David Royer said:

Logos slow? Yes. Logos buggy? Yes.

I agree.  In an earlier posting, Logos said that they had over 1400 bugs.  I cannot speak for every software company.  When I was a developer for a major company that writes its software and processes mortgages, if our bug list came close to 100, there was a talk about the quality of our product.  

The question is whether your mortgage processing software performed anywhere near the number of different operations included in the Logos package.  Did it handle and search linguistic forms (I doubt that).  Did it search an evergrowing corpus of resources?  Did it link to the resources?  Did it allow you to take notes on operations and allow you to search your notes?  The point is that you are comparing apples and oranges.  Your software performed basically one operation while Logos performs many.

Matthew C Jones said:

minuscule

Minuscule?  Matthew, you simply do not understand the mortgage industry in the United States.  It would take one of our larger clients eight hours to process all of the transactions and produce the required reports for the company, investors, and government agencies.  Our larger clients would processed/produced over a terabyte of data daily.

While there are a lot of difference between mortgage software and bible software, the major one is the data that you are processing is $$$.

tom collinge said:

Minuscule?

In terms of lines of code? Yes. Logos 4 dwarfs mortgage processing programs.

tom collinge said:

Our larger clients would processed/produced over a terabyte of data daily.

Want to hazard a guess how much data Logos moves daily?

My little bro works for a company that moves more than a  many terabyte per second.  But like George said:

George Somsel said:

The point is that you are comparing apples
and oranges.  Your software performed basically one operation while
Logos performs many.

Whether it is Logos, a mortgage company or Amazon, we are comparing apples to oranges to kiwi fruit. Complaining in the forum fixes little, direct requests for help go further.

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 said:

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.

John Sheeley said:

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.

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.

Shawn Drewett said:

I appreciate your kindness Milford.

Thanks, Shawn.  I think I may appreciate the pain you are feeling also!                       Blessings!  In every area!  *smile*

Shawn Drewett said:

This issue is DEFINITELY split on the forums.

I think another reason for this is, to paraphrase the nursery rhyme, that when Logos is good, it is very very good, but when it's bad it is horrid. In other words, some people seem to sail through with very few if any problems, and others (in the vast minority, thankfully) have really horrible problems getting Logos to even install let alone index and run. The reasons for their problems run the gamut from real bugs in Logos that only show up under certain configurations (which explains why most users don't run into them), to hardware failures on the user's machine which they blame on Logos. Those sorts of problems are becoming rarer and rarer since L4 shipped as Logos nails down and fixes more obscure bugs in each release. They have told us that the complaints we hear on the forum are indeed not the norm, that the overwhelming positive feedback they get, and the number of customers who are using it happily without ever contacting customer service support the notion that L4 is very very solid indeed.

The horrid experiences should of course never happen, and they get lots of volume on the forums and taint people's views of the software and the company. Logos does usually go out of its way to help users who have particularly strange configuration specific problems, even if the fault ends up not being Logos's. Those users usually go away very satisfied in the end, but their initial loud complaints live on in the forums forever and spark other complaints.

So, I'm not denying that problems do occur and that they shouldn't. There are still issues that I've been complaining about for months which haven't been addressed yet and I am irritated by the low priority Logos has placed on my particular issues. But I know that they factor in a lot of other things that I'm not aware of, including, but not limited to, how many other users have complained about this issue (if I'm the only one, and there's something else that more people have been reporting as a problem, then they might make me wait, and that's only fair).

Thank you Mr Murray, and Peace to you!