I believe most people have settled down from the initial sticker shock of the L5 upgrades, but I wanted to post a few comments myself concerning L5.
First of all, add me to the list of those who've upgraded. I took the plunge last night, and only reason I didn't upgrade sooner was the flu set me back, then I had classes and didn't want Logos indexing during my papers I had to finish. :-)
I will admit when I first saw the "sticker shock", my heart almost stopped. The L5 upgrade price was definitely much higher than I thought it would be for me (mine was close to $700 to go for L5 Platinum). Also the timing was a little unannounced kinda springing it on us (Logos was probably wanting to make a big splash before Christmas, although a little advanced notice would have been helpful). :-)
I also knew a crossgrade/free engine was coming, and I was perfectly fine with not being able to download it "from day one", and I went ahead and upgraded anyway. I know Logos has always promised a free engine, and I knew it was coming. I was perfectly fine that it wasn't offered "on day one" since that's the one thing Logos hasn't promised, and this upgrade is huge. It was close to 2GB in upgrades, and Logos probably didn't want everyone hitting the Logos servers at once (I know they were taxed on launch day and I had trouble just trying to read about L5!).
I also knew I would want the new books and would want to fully "upgrade" anyway to take full advantage of L5, so I went ahead and bit the bullet and got it done. I went for Platinum for now since that's the bottom line I could spring for, and down the road I may look at going Diamond since some of the books on my Wish List made it in there. :-)
Like many here, my finances aren't great either. We've got another house for sale in North Georgia (since we moved back to Arkansas, anyone interested in moving to North Georgia, let me know!), and our finances aren't in perfect shape either. I looked at the Payment Plans, and that was definitely a feasible option, but at the last minute, I decided to charge the entire upgrade price as well and simply pay off my CC. L5 will be my Christmas present, and my family agreed upon it, so all is well there.
I've only used L5 less than a day, and I still haven't even begun to figure out all the new stuff inside, but I can already tell it's incredible. Performance on the Mac version is far superior to L4, and L5 feels more refined and polished. I can't wait to dig into more of the community features and hope it means more socially-oriented Bible study. I also can't wait to dig into all the new Logos-addins content. Just from what I've seen in the videos and what I've seen scratching the surface of L5, the new content is fantastic. An entire team of Bible scholars have come together, labored intensively over the Bible, and brought us all of these Bible knowledge connections we can access with a few clicks of the mouse. I wouldn't say we've gotten to the point where Logos 5 is a "complete electronic Bible scholar" (a couple more things would make that happen), but it's a huge step closer from Logos going from simply and "electronic research assistant" to being an "electronic Bible scholar".
The Bible scholars that labored intensively for us deserve to be paid for their work, and I for one am grateful I was able to upgrade to L5 to help Logos and their team keep up the work they do for us.
I also see a lot of future potential in L5 as a direction that Logos is going. The more scholarly content plus the deeper community/social integration is exciting to watch. I don't feel that Logos 5 isn't the end result of the new direction yet. I feel that it's one giant step closer in the direction and Logos is really just getting started with deeper community integration and scholarly intelligence, with much more to come in the future.
Some mentioned on here do we really need more books and do we really save time in software programs such as Logos? I'm a Bible College student, and my college practically runs on Logos. Additionally, I'm an online student and don't have easy access to the campus library. It is wonderful to know I can fire up an application, enter a few search terms, and have a wealth of information at my fingertips. I don't buy Logos just for books I want to read cover to cover. It's about having access to a wealth of seminary library-level research at my fingertips. My only regret is I wish I could have had some of the L5 features earlier! The Annotated Bibliography feature would have majorly come in handy a few semesters ago. :-) And this semester I'm in the process of developing expository sermons, so this week I'll get to put the Sermon Starter Guide through the paces. I've already nailed down my outline, but it'll sure help with illustrations and parallel passages.
As for the question about "more books", when I've looked at the large Logos collections, sometimes I ask myself, "do I really even need some of these books". I'll admit sometimes at purchasing time, some of the titles aren't appealing at all as something I'll really use. Usually though, time and time again I'll take a Bible College course that'll require a certain book or certain books (usually ones in my Logos collection), and if I didn't have my Logos collection, I'd be sunk trying to hunt them down. Logos has definitely helped me better excel in college courses when I needed resources and needed them quickly.
Someone also mentioned about taking the money and donating it to Bible translation work. Truly one should go to the Lord about how the Lord wants them to invent their money for Him, and personally this year in addition to purchasing L5, the Lord laid it on my heart to donate toward one of my favorite ministries to help further the spread of the Gospel, so by the grace of God, I was able to accomplish both. I believe that donating to the Lord's work is important as well, and we all should continue to contribute to ministry work. Logos, while a profit company, is a ministry as well. Their goal is to serve the Lord while serving us, taking us further into Bible study than we've ever imagined. I know investing in L5 will be a solid investment for me and my college work and eventually my ministry work.
So am I happy I upgraded to Logos 5? Absolutely. Logos 5 is going to take my personal Bible study and college research to an entirely new level, and it was worth the upgrade price.If I can eventually go higher (Diamond), I'd be happy to as well.
So for those that may still be on the fence about the "sticker shock", either wait for the crossgrade if that's the best option for you, consider one of their Payment Plans to spread out the costs, or go ahead and take the plunge. It's an investment, not an expense. And it's worth it.
