Confessions of a disgruntled beta tester

This is going to be a long one. I thought I would share some thoughts and reactions to version 4 while it is fresh in my mind. I was a frustrated beta tester and not happy with the new stuff.

I jumped in on the beta testing when it was offered. I was put in the DVD install group but also took advantage of the download for us impatient types. Unfortunately, several things stopped me from fully participating in the testing. First, I'm an IT drone these days and our end-of-year processing coincided with the beta period. I spent most of that time keeping the company servers up with prayer, chewing gum and a patch or two. As a result, I didn't have much time to test and I didn't show my face much (at all, really) on the beta forum.

Second, the installs I did perform were more or less flawless. I installed on my home machine (vista 64) with the DVD, and on my several laptop partitions (Vista 64, Win7 64-bit RTM, Win7 32-bit RTM) by both DVD and download. Installs, downloads, updates, indexing, etc. went eerily smooth. Nothing to complain about there.

Third, the few bugs I did find were never around long enough for me to reproduce and document. A couple of times I found something that would crash the app but when I restarted, Logos jumped right into an update, and when it was finished I couldn't reproduce it. I put that down to dedicated and manic testers and highly-caffeinated Logos developers. I also found a few odds-and-ends artifacts in the GUI (for popups or rendering and such) that could only be reproduced on a hit-or-miss basis, and as with the crashes, an update would drop and then I couldn't reproduce at all. The speed of the testing and respin cycle during the beta was nothing short of amazing.

The last reason I didn't get too much involved was that, at first, (here it comes) I hated! hated! hated! the new interface and underlying philosophy of the new design. I had learned how to get v3 to do what I wanted. I had collections, searches, workspaces, resource associations, menus and the like all worked out to help me study the way I studied best, and those were all gone.

I couldn't make v4 do anything the way I wanted. My initial frustration level just with dynamic collections almost did me in. I just wasn't grasping how to get useful search terms and the collections I was making were uber-messy with too many false hits. I was ready to plan a memorial service for my library because I couldn't see any way to make this new stuff useful to me. As I said, I'm in IT. I've lost count of how many times I've had to learn new tools or a newer way of doing things but I just wasn't getting any good feelings here. With all that said....

I gave v4 another try last week when it was released. After a couple of days, I started to think it wasn't so bad, that I could at least live with the new stuff. Lots of good pointers on the forums helped me along, and sometimes a liberal application of the cluebat helps too.

For further motivation, the Gold to Platinum upgrade gave me several new resources I'd been itching for and the good pricing just pushed me right along. A pox on the House of Logos for tempting me with great collections at screaming prices! Please keep it up....

My wife and I spent this last weekend in a creekside cabin in Sedona, AZ for a weekend getaway. She brought several books and a journal, while I resolved to bring nothing but my Bible and laptop. I was going to get to know v4 and give it a chance to shine, even if it killed me.

Long story short -- I'm a convert.

The word 'paradigm' is one of those overused corporate buzzwords that make me shudder. The move from v3 to v4 really does require a paradigm shift. It can be painful, but in this case, very much worth the effort.

Dynamic Collections and Collections of Collections: Once I figured out what it was driving at, so cool!! I started creating collections of Bibles, commentaries, and so forth, and it all started working the way it should. When I got to collections for my favorite authors, I then wanted an All Favorite Authors collection. It took me a while before I figured out where to get current collections from in order to drag them to the Plus field. I haven't played much with Ratings or mytag yet but I get it now.

I love the user history. It makes it so easy to backtrack to what I really need after I've gone down a rabbit-trail.

Favorites Tab -- love it.

Search speed is amazing. It is so fast that when I first saw it, I thought the search engine itself was crashing out.

Layouts - also a very nice touch. An excellent replacement for workspaces. The layout history is very handy.

Customizable guides look very nice. I’ve been following the forums discussions on them and am looking forward to the improvements.

I'm glad that the Ctl-F quickfind is still there.

I'm still figuring out how things fit together in the big picture. It appears that search terms, keywords and syntax have undergone some changes and I'll have to relearn some stuff.

I'm glad that the full-page reverse interlinear style is coming back. My greek kung fu is not the best (two years of it too long ago) and I find the ribbon confusing.

The learning curve on L4 is steep but not nearly as tall as it was in v3. Much of what I want to do is more intuitive than before.

Speaking as an obsessed layman rather than a professional scholar, teacher or pastor, bigger and faster searches that yield more results are great. I remember the bad old days of library research, where one could spend days in the stacks with a sockful of nickels for the copier, a highlighter, a fistful of notecards and writer’s cramp. Now the challenge is to pare the gargantuan amount of data down to a usable level. There are times when doing a quick lookup in a handful of trusted resources is preferred. Associations were an easy way to get control of the huge number of resources available. Perhaps the new system already allows this but I’m still learning the nooks and crannies.

Overall, a very impressive effort.

Larry

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Comments

Bill Cook

What in the world behemoth machine are you runnign it on to get the professed speed you are talking about? A Cray?[:)]

Really, I hope I get the hang of it, but 3.0 was my favorite and I 4 seems empty and SLOW...

Randall Hartman

Thanks for the thoughtful and helpful comments...

Rich DeRuiter

Overall, a very impressive effort.

Thanks Larry. Your observations echo my own, and many others. Libronix 'power-users' have had the hardest time adjusting, but once they do, almost invariably prefer it to L3. It is an adjustment, and I haven't fully exploited all the advantages of L4 yet (maybe I need to find a cabin in Sedona!), but find myself able to do almost everything I regularly did in L3 (and those things have simple work-arounds).

Libronix feels so clunky by comparison now, and L4 so smooth.

TCBlack

sometimes a liberal application of the cluebat helps too.

I must remember that little phrase for future use.

Robert Pavich

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33035#Comment_33035

Larry,

I second everything you said...

I'm also a convert....

Ron Corbett

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33040#Comment_33040

Q: "How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb"?

A: "Only one ... but the light bulb has to really want to change."

Change ??? - Initially, there was some frustration - - trying to get behind the curtain (Toto, come back Toto.) But after a few hours, I realized what great changes were represented in such quiet simplicity. So far I can do almost everything I like/need to do, and I suspect the rest is either THERE and I don't know it yet or ON THE WAY in typical Logos fashion.

The LOGOS team has truly outdone themselves.

Ron Corbett

Mitch Davis

Call me "flexible" but although there were hoops to initially jump through and some pretty intensive abuse to my laptop/desktop (I believe the indexing pretty much maligned my fairly new laptop)...I have to say I fell in love witch v. 4 so quickly. Everything seems so simple...in some cases it felt "too simple" that you seemingly lose the feel of the "power" of manual customizations rather than come to a realization of the built-in power of v. 4

All in all, I really like hearing other Logos users' experiences...especially the one who vent frustration only to eventually come to appreciate v. 4.

Larry Schmid

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33023#Comment_33023

What in the world behemoth machine are you runnign it on to get the professed speed you are talking about? A Cray?

Really, I hope I get the hang of it, but 3.0 was my favorite and I 4 seems empty and SLOW...

Well, I do work with the Cray's big brothers on my day job.

I use L4 mostly on my laptop:

2.9GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6400
4GB, 667MHz DDR2
520GB 7200rpm
Mobile Intel GM45 Express Chipset

As far as search speed goes, I went through several exercises to improve the search speed oL3 -- putting resources on a separate drive, building an R0 stripe volume, etc. For a benchmark, I would search for 'grace' in the entire library. Best speed ever was around 4 minutes on my desktop, and well over 6 minutes on my new laptop.

Same search in L4 came in at around 20 seconds on my laptop with no fancy disk schema, which is why I thought the search engine was crashing....

Bill Cook

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33147#Comment_33147

Yes, I think I see what people are referring to as speed, by searching for one item. But, my notice of slowness, is when using the Passage guide (And, it searches through all unlocked resources, this really takes time...)

But, yes, if I search for one item like, Grace, the search is very fast.

I have a slightly slower laptop than you-

Dual Core 1.6 (not Core 2 Duo - big differences- Core 2 much faster)

2GB RAM - 533 FSB

250 GB 7200 RPM WD Black

Same video -wiih 256MB

L4 runs OK, except for the evidently massive search for a passage. This was rather slow in L3, but not nearly as much. I understand there are many more things it is doing (many more resources to search), but still, is very slow.

But, I am struggling with the paradigm shift... Hope to get there, soon...

Larry Schmid

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33165#Comment_33165

Yes, I think I see what people are referring to as speed, by searching for one item. But, my notice of slowness, is when using the Passage guide (And, it searches through all unlocked resources, this really takes time...)

<snip>

L4 runs OK, except for the evidently massive search for a passage. This was rather slow in L3, but not nearly as much. I understand there are many more things it is doing (many more resources to search), but still, is very slow.

But, I am struggling with the paradigm shift... Hope to get there, soon...

My guess is that search speed in something like the passage guide is best managed somewhat like L3, with collections for starters, but also by resource ranking. That should give you your preferred resources at the top with a wider search under the More button. This is a frustrated guess on my part, because I'm not in front of my personal machine to verify, and haven't spent too much time in the guides so far.

I did see some slowness with scrolling a couple of times but realized that in my browsing, I had opened over two dozen resources, some linked together, spread over four panes.

Bohuslav Wojnar

Overall, a very impressive effort.

Larry, thank you so much for well written and very encouraging post. Being Beta tester and going through all the pains of the change (and surprice) nobody of us, I think, really expected, you are right, it needs the paradigm shift.

I think you should allow Logos to use your post as a blog article. It might be very helpful to other people and here it will be covered by the newer posts very soon. That is my suggestion. Thank you again. You said it really well.

Robert Pavich

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33172#Comment_33172

Yes, I think I see what people are referring to as speed, by searching for one item. But, my notice of slowness, is when using the Passage guide (And, it searches through all unlocked resources, this really takes time...)

<snip>

L4 runs OK, except for the evidently massive search for a passage. This was rather slow in L3, but not nearly as much. I understand there are many more things it is doing (many more resources to search), but still, is very slow.

But, I am struggling with the paradigm shift... Hope to get there, soon...

My guess is that search speed in something like the passage guide is best managed somewhat like L3, with collections for starters, but also by resource ranking. That should give you your preferred resources at the top with a wider search under the More button. This is a frustrated guess on my part, because I'm not in front of my personal machine to verify, and haven't spent too much time in the guides so far.

I did see some slowness with scrolling a couple of times but realized that in my browsing, I had opened over two dozen resources, some linked together, spread over four panes.

Not to mention using a custom passage guide that leaves out the things you don't use AND keeping sections of the PG closed until you need them

Bill Cook

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33188#Comment_33188

And, that is not what I have yet learned how to do. I guess that is where my frustration comes in. I didn't have to assemble collections or customize a passage guide in L3. But, with more resources it is only natural to expect a slowdown I guess. I just thought the indexing would make the wait magically disappear...

I'm think I'm going to have to view all the videos...

Robert Pavich

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33201#Comment_33201

William,

It couldn't be easier to make a custom passage guide...

Guides>Make a new guide template

click the elements you want to appear in your guide...INCLUDING collections like "systematic theologies" or "bible history" or whatever...

Then save it with the name "My Passage Guide" and it will be the default from now on...

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33226#Comment_33226

Then save it with the name "My Passage Guide" and it will be the default from now on...

Or just save it with another name and use it only when you want to.

(Just in case the clarification were necessary)

EricS

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33036#Comment_33036

sometimes a liberal application of the cluebat helps too.
I must remember that little phrase for future use.

I had to look up what that (cluebat) was.

I used to have a teacher in H.S. that if you said anything he deemed stupid, you had to go to the front of the class and he would hit you on the head with a large squeaky hammer which he had deemed the "club of enlightenment". I think he knew about this so called cluebat too, though that was many, many years ago.

cluebat

Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

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[edit] English

[edit] Noun

Singular

cluebat

Plural

cluebats

cluebat (plural cluebats)

(computing slang) A Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool shaped like a baseball bat.

Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool

Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

Jump to: navigation, search

[edit] English

[edit] Noun

Singular

Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool

Plural

Luser Attitude Readjustment Tools

Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool (plural Luser Attitude Readjustment Tools)

(computing slang) Any long implement, such as a baseball bat, used to strike lusers.
(computing slang) Any blunt instrument used to forcibly insert clue into lusers.
(computing slang) Any instrument which is large, heavy and painful, used to respond appropriately to particularly annoying lusers.

spitzerpl

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33023#Comment_33023

and I 4 seems empty and SLOW...

I must admit, "empty" was my first reaction too. Where was everything? the menus looked so small it had to be empty. You went from super busy with the homepage to super "empty". But the power truly is there and it is extremely flexible. The thing i like about it is that it is flexible in the things that help me study, not the things that help me manage. I quickly got over the empty feel and can't stand having to open up L3.

Michael Hite

First I agree with EVERYTHING that you said Larry - I am a convert too, BUT...I think you have echoed what I think is a potentially serious problem...

The last reason I didn't get too much involved was that, at first, (here it comes) I hated! hated! hated! the new interface and underlying philosophy of the new design. I had learned how to get v3 to do what I wanted. I had collections, searches, workspaces, resource associations, menus and the like all worked out to help me study the way I studied best, and those were all gone.

As you said - your initial response was that you hated it! I did too and so do most people I know that have tried it. Unlike those of us who are Logos addicts (good term to me) they are not as willing to work through the curve to figure it out. I teach Logos at a Bible college and have a number of former students (now preachers, ministers and missionaries) calling me asking why Logos messed up such a good product. I am trying to tell them that it really is a good thing, but the push back is pretty strong. The upgrade pricing if you have already purchased many individual items that are now included in the Platinum Library is not that tempting and the change in workflow is so different many of my former students have told me that they are not interested in upgrading. These preachers and ministers should be some of Logos' best salespeople, but they won't be. I think we all (Logos included) have our work cut out for us in telling people WHY this new version is better and convincing them to work through the pain of changing.

I love it (I will love it more when some of my favorite features are back onboard) but I have to admit that I didn't love it at first.

Mike Aubrey

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33586#Comment_33586

I teach Logos at a Bible college and have a number of former students (now preachers, ministers and missionaries) calling me asking why Logos messed up such a good product.

I've only heard the exact opposite.

Jacob Hantla

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33687#Comment_33687

I teach Logos at a Bible college and have a number of former students (now preachers, ministers and missionaries) calling me asking why Logos messed up such a good product.

I've only heard the exact opposite.

Having just introduced a few new people to Logos the only complaints the newbies have is the time to install and get indexed. They LOVE the interface and all the features!

It's only the guys who used version 3 that I've heard that have interface complaints...and among those it's generally the power users that complain. The guys who used Libronix infrequently love how much easier it is to use v4 (despite intermittent use they never got the hang of all the features of 3, and 4 just seems to work to them).

Michael Hite

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33687#Comment_33687

I teach Logos at a Bible college and have a number of former students (now preachers, ministers and missionaries) calling me asking why Logos messed up such a good product.

I've only heard the exact opposite.

Really Mike - that is great to hear! My circle has been a bit disgruntled as have many, many of the users I read in here. I am glad to hear that you are having a different experience with the response to L4. I hope that spreads.

Mike Aubrey

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33698#Comment_33698

The most recent statement came from my father. I hadn't talked to him in about a week, so I sent him an e-mail today, worried that he was as frustrated as some of the people I've read on the forum have been. This was his response:

"I wish I had this software 20 years ago. But, I'll enjoy it for the next 20 for sure."

He's been using Logos 3 since 2007.

Michael Hite

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33697#Comment_33697

It's only the guys who used version 3 that I've heard that have interface complaints...and among those it's generally the power users that complain. The guys who used Libronix infrequently love how much easier it is to use v4 (despite intermittent use they never got the hang of all the features of 3, and 4 just seems to work to them).

I agree Jacob - that is kind of my point a bit. It is the L3 power users that seem to have the biggest problem with the new version. That is a tough market segment to have disgruntled since they are the best advocates for the product.

The course I teach contains 25 classroom hours of Logos training so most of my students become power users. It seems to make sense that I am getting more push back from that segment. I had a similar reaction to it initially.

Mike Aubrey

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33721#Comment_33721

I agree Jacob - that is kind of my point a bit. It is the L3 power users that seem to have the biggest problem with the new version. That is a tough market segment to have disgruntled since they are the best advocates for the product.

The course I teach contains 25 classroom hours of Logos training so most of my students become power users. It seems to make sense that I am getting more push back from that segment. I had a similar reaction to it initially.

hmmm, I've found that much of what I used to do as a power user, doesn't any longer require "power user" effort.

Is it the simplicity that's throwing us off? That (some of) the power activities have become the easy activities?

...maybe?

Michael Hite

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33725#Comment_33725

I agree Jacob - that is kind of my point a bit. It is the L3 power users that seem to have the biggest problem with the new version. That is a tough market segment to have disgruntled since they are the best advocates for the product.

The course I teach contains 25 classroom hours of Logos training so most of my students become power users. It seems to make sense that I am getting more push back from that segment. I had a similar reaction to it initially.

hmmm, I've found that much of what I used to do as a power user, doesn't any longer require "power user" effort.

Is it the simplicity that's throwing us off? That (some of) the power activities have become the easy activities?

...maybe?

I think that has a great deal to do with it. It is simply the change in thinking that has to take place in how things are done. It is reorienting your approach that takes time and effort. That seems to be putting some folks off. I am trying to convince them that the time spent will be worth it, but there is a lot that must be changed from how they were doing things before. In their minds - it has been messed up.

I have found that many features don't require "power user effort" anymore either. Morphological searches, visual filtering to identify structures, and other search dynamics seem much easy NOW that I have changed my thought processes.

steve clark

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33730#Comment_33730

In hopes that Logos will review posts like these to hear the Voice of the Customer

I like the layout of L4 and there are other features that i like as well.

My disappointments are:

As you can see with many posts, a lot of us are not running newer high end computers (i know that our church cannot afford new PCs at this time; i am just a lay person). Thus L4 runs slower on our computers. As for me i cannot afford a new PC right now (along with 15 million others out here).

There are several features that did not make it into L4 (i really like the PRAs for quickly sequencing through Bibles or Commentaries).

Layouts are not nearly as friendly as L3. It takes several drags and drops along with trial and error to setup panes the way i like them. This could easily be setup with fewer mouse clicks in L3 (L3 followed standard Windows rules in setting up panes).

And as you have mentioned, there is a learning curve.

Fortunately L3 is still running on my laptop. So i can run it when i am out at Bible studies and need reasonable access times. And other time during studies at home i can jump forward and use L4. (i probably will not be able to use L4 on my desktop)

i hope that perhaps Logos will be able to improve performance for the many of us with older PCs (after all programmers can easily determine the PC's speed and capabilities from within the program, i know). I also hope that they will provide backward compatibility with older features.

God willing, i will be able to learn how to use L4 and continue to enjoy its many helps in understanding His Word.

my Laptop: Dell 1720 Inspiron 1.66G core 2 duo with 4Gig RAM, 250G HD, integrated onboard video, Vista Home Premium

my Desktop: AMD 2500, 1Gig RAM, 2ea 300Gig HD, Nvidia graphics card, Windows 2K OS

Gary Butner, Th.D.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33035#Comment_33035

Libronix feels so clunky by comparison now, and L4 so smooth.

When I first downloaded L4 and opened it up I felt sick. The program didn't respond, and I certainly didn't have the expertise to know what was transpiring in the background. However, I have been a Logos user and sometimes beta tester since the mid-ninties, and have a lot of faith in Bob and the Logos team. The learning curve is steep, however, I love the daily newspaper format, syncing, and of course the new books. L4 isn't like most windows programs in that you can jump right in and immediately have the feel, but one needs to go to the tutorials and study, study, study. I fully agree that L3 is clunky in comparison to the the ultra-smooth L4.

Robert Pavich

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/33725#Comment_33725

hmmm, I've found that much of what I used to do as a power user, doesn't any longer require "power user" effort.

Is it the simplicity that's throwing us off? That (some of) the power activities have become the easy activities?

...maybe?

That's a big part of it....it's deceptive in that way.

Second...(and this forum is proof:)

People HATE change..period...change doesn't get a "fair shake," any change made has to overcome the odds no matter how valuable or necessary the change is.

Witness the amount of posts (and beta testors) that tell the same story...

Hated it

Kinda liked it

Love it (with a few minor caveats)

When I opened up V4 I went "what???" I was lost...and it seemed like it was working against me...until I re-thought the ideas that V3 had forced me to adopt due to it's interface...