So long Logos4...

Andrew, can you give me a few minutes? thanks.

Andrew,

I would like the opportunity to address your issues, if you will allow me, and, hopefully curb some resentment that are expressing. Thank-you.

As a longtime user, dating back quite some years, I can attest to some of your issues. Yet, if allowed, I don’t understand what you are trying to tell us. Please let me explain. There have been issues of downloading problems in the past, and some current, but most have been resolved and the users are running the software. Which, is subject to your particular system, such as bandwidth, processor speed, available hard drive capacity, etc., etc.The continuance of the 57m, is partially due to  - it never finished; afterwards you give the impression that eventually did or it would not have initiated the 9.5gb of resources. Although you may have 11.7 gb, there may have been updates to your current resources that you were not aware of, thus the lower gb download.

Logged in as a different user; are you meaning that you have ‘two’ accounts that are identical? Logged in where? This doesn’t make sense, sorry, I am just reading what you are stating, If I am incorrect then would you be so kind as to clarify for me.....because if the ‘two’ logins are identical, and on the same system you are using, there would not be another download of 9.5gb, because the L4 would see that everything is up to date.

Using Win 7. I get the impression that you were using winXP, possibly, prior to the upgrade. The upgrade, would require another additional setup of L4 since the filing system is slightly different, and there is a definite difference of OS Platform’s between the two programs. Also, in defining upgrade, was it a new machine or just an upgrade of the exiting OS to Win7?

You speak of bandwidth as though you are not from America, which may be causing a slight issue with the updating of the L4 program. Really I do not know for sure, just going with what you are saying.....L4 has the option to run “off line” but as soon as you change it to “on line” it will initiate a download if it see’s that one is available to bring everything up to date, this includes resources as well. So maybe the programmers can do something, I do not know but it never hurts to ask.....

The preparing Library is a common thing, again you are referring back to the download of 9.5gb. Which seems to be an update of the program. Again, just going with your words.

As clairvoyants: the command structure was rebuilt, yes. It took me a spell to get it into my stubborn already know how to do it brain, as well as possibly many others. Doing an internet search does not apply to L4, that is an independent function, unless you are referring to the Perseus look-up. As for the free-book, if you already had it in L4, it will not let you ‘re-download it”, unless you deleted the resources from the library. I have never been able to accomplish a “duplicate resources” in L4. As for commands, they are still the same and some extras have been added, there is a wiki page that has them listed, you can print it out for further need.

There is no need to “save a desktop” in L4, it was changed to ‘Layout’ and can be easily accessed by the dropdown from the ‘Layouts’ tab on the far right of the program.

As to your other comments, I would recommend the wiki pages which cam be found at the top of your screen as you read this reply. Just click “wiki” and you will be re-directed to it. It has a ‘table of contents [TOC]’ and also a search engine on the left that you can type in a command or something that you are having difficulties getting done....

Hopefully you will reconsider the usage of L4 and discover that there is a vast opportunity for discovery....

Hope this helps. R4m.

Perhaps I am living in some sort of sweet dream world, but I've never experienced these nightmares. I run L4 on a 2.5 year old Lenovo ThinkPad T500 with Windows 7 and very slow DSL but everything seems to run well. Were I to be plagued with such problems, I suspect I would be as upset, but it seems as though something is going on outside of L4.

Good-bye!

Andrew Morgan said:

57M download!! At this point I have lost  my @#*&$%@ sense of humour. 

I can relate, I use the method in the wiki to avoid the downloading, I choose to reindex, but thats just me..

There are faster ways (avoiding big downloads) just unsupported by Logos.

http://wiki.logos.com/Quick_Installation_onto_multiple_computers

Andrew Morgan said:

 

As clairvoyants: What used to be on a menu is now a command you must remember or suck out your thumb or do an internet search for. I downloaded one of the free books recently, only to discover it was already in my library.  No problem - just remove duplicate resources right?  I know there was a menu item in Logo2/3 to do this, but now you have to be a clairvoyant to guess a suitable command.  Would you believe there was no match in the entire library search for "remove duplicate"?  In Logo2/3, if I has to search every menu item, I could find it inside a minute.

If you had up-todate version in L4 it should not download, only if there was an update

Andrew Morgan said:

I tried to get into studying with Logo4 and discovered I could not save my desktop.  I know in Logos2/3 I could select this from the Save Workspace in the File menu - rather obvious. After extreme frustration with the layouts, I eventually discovered the pencil icon.  Right-click a layout has a "Load", but there is no obvious "Save".  In effect, a save is a rename of a snapshot, but there is no way to make a new snapshot. So saving the workspace consists of identifying some victim snapshot, updating to current, and then renaming!  Which moron thought that was a good idea???  And once it is saved, where is it?  How do I send it to someone else?  Oh "File->Save As", what have they done to you?

Chick on pencil next to snapshot and time - it will add it to the menu on the Left hand side

Andrew Morgan said:

So long... I am off to find another suite.

Sorry to see you go.. did you ask in forum, we always try to help..

Donovan R. Palmer said:

Logos 4 uses bandwidth like a Hummer uses petrol.

[Y]

Phil Jagger said:

Is it possible amid a sea of people admiring the fine clothes of the Emperor as he rides down the street on his horse that Andrew is one of only a few handful of people to actually be honest about the fact that the Emperor is stark butt naked?

Phil, sorry but I cannot agree with your analogy. It seems to me you try to say that those who say: "Logos 4 is great piece of software, I like the direction of it's development, it works great for me..." are not sincere but trying (out of honor, fear or simple flattery) not to say openly "the emperor is naked". I strongly disagree. I think those satisfied with Logos 4 are as sincere as those having problems with it. How I know? Because I am one of them. May be I haven't understood you well enough, in this case I apologize.

P.S. One more thing: saying to a customer who has some issues with the software, that others do not experience those issues, don't have necessarily be negatively seen by the OP. It should be helpful IMHO to the OP to see it is not a general design problem of the software, there is something going on what could/should be worked out with the Customer Service.

Phil Jagger said:

Based on this I truly question the decisions made by Logos 4 NOT to cater for networking environments; 

Actually, Phil, Logos HAS catered to what they see as the COMING networking environment--cloud. Sync settings, licenses, & master copies of all the resources are now held in the cloud "for" us, as is a growing body of "community" data. 

HOME networking, while of interest to you & me, is the archtecture of the immediate present, perhaps soon to be past.

If you've lived with us through v. 2, v. 3, & now v. 4, then you know that Bob has bet the farm each time on the architecture that's coming. You (and I) don't like it, but so far Bob's been on target (with the possible exception of WPF).

I don't like cloud either. To me, in too many ways it's a return to the days of "big iron" architectures that distributed computing was supposed to save us from. I still prefer distributed...

So while I feel your pain (literally, each time I've had to rebuild L4), unless industry picks a different "future" architecture, I don't see Logos moving away from cloud any time soon.

Many blessings to you.

imho

BillS said:

(with the possible exception of WPF)

BillS said:

Phil Jagger said:

Based on this I truly question the decisions made by Logos 4 NOT to cater for networking environments; 

 

Actually, Phil, Logos HAS catered to what they see as the COMING networking environment--cloud. Sync settings, licenses, & master copies of all the resources are now held in the cloud "for" us, as is a growing body of "community" data. 

HOME networking, while of interest to you & me, is the architecture of the immediate present, perhaps soon to be past.

If you've lived with us through v. 2, v. 3, & now v. 4, then you know that Bob has bet the farm each time on the architecture that's coming. You (and I) don't like it, but so far Bob's been on target (with the possible exception of WPF).

I don't like cloud either. To me, in too many ways it's a return to the days of "big iron" architectures that distributed computing was supposed to save us from. I still prefer distributed...

So while I feel your pain (literally, each time I've had to rebuild L4), unless industry picks a different "future" architecture, I don't see Logos moving away from cloud any time soon.

Many blessings to you.

I hear you Bill but if I were Bob I'd be worried about the farm...

• Cloud computing is congruent with fibre infrastructure - a commodity that is not yet rolled out in all countries including mine.
• Data cost are becoming prohibitive - many international airports have ceased offering patrons free wifi because of this fact.
• As cloud computing becomes more entrenched, data costs will increase accordingly
• The choice to use the cloud as a software end user SHOULD be a choice not an in imperative

I am also observing a phenomenon which is highlighted in forums such as this and that is that we start off as consumers, we invest heavily both with finances and time into getting the best out of that software and then when it evolves in a somewhat degenerate manner, we still champion the software because we have become a family of sojourners who need this software to work because we've given it so much of our attention.

From a consumer's point of view, although I applaud the recent comments for being open and honest about the various frustrations of this software, they make a perfect point that consumers are NOT getting value for money and that as end users rather than wishing things were different (better) we should be demanding better form from the developers.

To let others know that all of us are not completely satisfied with L4, i'm posting a short list of positives & negatives. i've noticed that some who post on the forum get frustrated when they see many users trying to say only positive things about the software.

Negatives

Indexing -- on older computers (such as mine) indexing causes crashing frequently and requires a LOT of coaxing to get my library indexed and working again (usually a couple of long days). Also the number of times a year that re-indexing is required seems excessive.

Lack of Backup/Restore of personal data -- over the past years i've lost information a few times. i wish Logos would provide tools for local backup & restore for our personal data. As a work-around i've learned to do a full backup on an external HD and been able many times to reinstall via method 2 in the wiki. Although this is not always possible. And when it does work, it takes a significant amount of time and work.

Slow progress of a finished product -- it has been a long ride with Logos on getting the features added to the software. Many times this is frustrating to me as a user. Fortunately virtually no other software that i own puts me in this situation. i'm not sure that i would want to go thru this again with a future version of Logos software.

Positives

With the new user interface and the forum, i was better able to figure out how the software was intended to work. In L3, i never figured out many of the features since the help files were so poorly written (e.g. Parallel resources, Passage Lists, Key word, etc). The L3 help files were very very brief and most of the time it was incredibly difficult to search and locate what i needed. But now i have a pretty good handle on how to do much more in L4.

As mentioned above, the forum has been a great help. Many generous users have helped me along my journey in learning to utilize L4. (Thanks to all of you!)

Logos has provided a wiki where we share instructions on how the software works. (Thank you Logos and fellow users!)

Mark Barnes' videos have been very useful to me and others. (Thanks Mark!)

My .02, and I have voiced this opinion before, there are a few issues Logos needs to address; or they already are, we can only hope!

1. When Logos 4 first came out, it was rough - it was really not ready to come out. But then, over the next 6 months or so, updates of features came out at a blistering pace. It was not only a significant improvement to the product, but it was FUN, plus you almost had the feeling anything you found that was of reasonable significance, gosh darn it was either going to get fixed or improved. Life was good.

But then, improvement has slowed down DRAMATICALLY; now there are still functions that have not been fully implemented, errors and bugs to be fixed, etc - this includes big stuff too.  Go through the wiki and look at the list of features added to Logos 4 in the last 6 months; there's very little there. Why? Logos is working on other platforms (Faithlife, Vyrso, Proclaim, iOS, Android), plumbing (iterations of sync that are still not complete), and who knows what other plumbing and stuff "under the covers".  This is all well and good, but from a user perspective, right now, it's as if very little is being done to improve the desktop products (Mac and PC).

2. The other big problem IMHO is some of the anomalies/problems/issues with the UI.  Logos bet on Microsoft's WPF, and they found out fixing problems or improving things is out of their control; plus MS is moving extremely slowly, if at ll, on WPF improvements. Maybe Logos is rewriting the UI to not use WPF, which is worthless on all these other platforms Logos supports?

3. We have lost any real insight on plans and scheduled for Logos. Used to be, we had some feeling, by quarter at least, of new functions coming. No more, communication has virtually stopped and some of what gets posted can be perceived as defensive. Are things so in flux or unpredictable that Logos just doesn't feel comfortable communicating any more? Are they so distracted they have forgotten about us?

I can't say we really know anything Logos plans to implement feature/function wise right now.  Users could be complaining about things that are being implemented as we speak.  Logos could help themselves a whole lot by being much more transparent with what is going on.  Logos 4 is a good product with great potential, but I really think Logos may not realize some of the sentiments that a growing number of users have.

Well, regarding 'the cloud', we're happy we're saying 'goodbye' to as much 'internet automatic support' as we can. Our little cellular hotspot is heaven-sent; works wherever we go. McCloud California, believe or not. Dumped our 'by the minutes' cell phones. Will be dumping our high-end satellite TV support and likely going back to land-lines to Japan. Net savings is quite significant. Friends far more wealthier than us are doing the same. Getting tired of ways for companies to take our money without asking.

Software that wants mucho gigabyte support is going to have to find another home.

(I MUST add the Libronix 'download what you need' is just great!! I'd never dreamed this software would fit in so nicely. What a great puppy. And he let's us do backups, move licenses and more!)

Jason B said:

So while I do admit to loving a lot of the tools and functionality of Logos4, I'm very sour on how I'm treated as a customer and that experience has left me feeling abused and used … My main problem I have with Logos is in the customer support department. I work for a software company as a senior product support specialist, so I'm very familiar with supporting software and the end user of the software, and I must say that when I called Logos support having difficulty using part of the software because of lack of documentation on how to use it, the lady who took my support call after doing some initial fact finding about the reason for my call to support, promptly told me that since I was not calling with a functional problem with Logos that my problem was just a training issue and pointed me to Morris Proctor. 

I've received good assistance on the rare occasion when I've called so I'm curious about this.  May I ask what your issue was?

I am amazed, why should we buy DVDs for Logos product
manuals from Morris proctor? Logos should provide a detail explanation about
how to use the software, like others. If there were no forum where we
could ask our problems, it would have  less value to buy the software. I
have invested myself over 6000 USD, but there is no way I could get a guide. I
am very grateful to those unnoticed by Logos , who take time to help me.I
am amazed as well for those who advocate for Logos as if everything were good.
Please let's become realistic.

I don't think that Bob doesn't know, at least someone from
Logos could report him. I have no doubt there could be at least someone
who controls the forums

At the time I was trying to do some research into a bible topic I had been studying, and to gather more data for my study to be sure I had looked at every angle of the topic I was trying to understand, it became apparent that the only tool left to solve my problem was in using a Syntax Query.  So after building a few different ones and not getting it right, I searched the forums since it seemed that generally has been the best place to get answers, but I came up dry from that search, so I felt my only option left was to call support to see if they could help me understand how to construct my syntax query correctly, and show me what I had been doing wrongly.  When I called support, they started asking me questions about if Logos was working correctly or not, and I told her that I was pretty certain it was working just fine, just that it was me who was the problem, and that I just didn't understand how to use the tool correctly, and could she assist me with this problem?  Her prompt reply was that my issue was a training problem and that she could not help me, and then she pointed out the Morris Proctor training materials on the Logos website, as well as telling me I could watch the support videos and ask questions in the forums to learn how to use the program correctly.  I was stunned honestly and so asked her again if she would help me, and I was told again that technical support was for reporting bugs and problems with the program, but if the program is working fine, then my issue is considered a training issue, and that technical support was not for that.  After a couple attempts to get her to help, I finally gave up, thanked her for her time (although gritting my teeth almost to say it), and then hung up.

In the past when I had called with needing help with Libronix v3, I have had to call several times to get help using the program effectively, and I was always greeted with a polite and helpful technician who worked hard to answer my questions and really did help me understand how to do what I needed help doing, so fast forward a couple years and now I'm using Logos4 for windows, it seems the tone of support has radically changed and I never was able to figure out how to solve my problem or learn how to correctly use syntax queries.  I even posted my problem to the forums with screen shots and I never got any response there either, so I finally just gave up, and consequently that study went unfinished. 

Overall I will say I do love how easy to use Logos4 has been to use, and it is VERY powerful to say the least! This software has in many ways transformed my spiritual life and given me the ability to find answers for myself that I previously didn't think it would be possible to get, as it makes working with the original language so easy and accessible, which is what I really wanted and needed.  So while I do have some things I don't like about Logos4 about its sluggish responsiveness and slow to load, overall I have been very pleased with it for the most part, and I do not have any of the downloading issues thankfully that others here have described.  While it is easy to be frustrated and I still am unhappy with how I was treated as a customer by Logos support, I do want to balance that out with the positives as well, so as to not give a lopsided perspective. 

So Logos, I can live without documentation if you will make your customer support be real support, but even still if you had outstanding documentation on how to use the software, it still would be no excuse to have poor customer service, because some people still just need a human to explain things to them in terms they can understand, as documentation is not always easily understood by all, although it can be a great start and help.  You make great bible study software, just please support it!

So let me get this right,

Logos is happy to charge premium prices to SELL their software, then (because their high priced software LACKS inbuilt user help and intuitive functions) they are happy to relinqush their responsibilities to a forum because they shouldn't have to get involved in training!

AND THEN because they have passed on their responsibilities to a forum, they are happy to remain aloof from the forum without a even a moderator or representative so that they can remain ignorant to the ongoing plight of their customers and the blaring shortfalls of both their product and their customer service.

Seriously!!!!!