A thought for former L3 lovers

Just some thoughts... from another point of view

SLOW - Sluggish GUI and almost three times longer to load

Mobile support - This might be worth the upgrade if they consider e-book readers such as Sony PRS-505

SLOW - Search, display, copy, virtually all aspects take twice as long as L3

Like many I hope, as I use it and get use to it, My opinion of L4 will improve but as a long time customer who has gone through several "upgrades" at considerable expense this has been the most disappointing and frustrating.

Did I mention it was slow? [*-)]

Blessings!

Philip Spitzer said:

For those who may be formulating their opinions of L4, ...

Good list.

Prioritized resources is great in 4. Results are much more meaningful.

(Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't find the searching as easy in 4.)

Philip,

Thank you for a well written post highlighting all the great new features in L4, but as I was reading your post I think it was highlighting something else--the fact that there are several different groups who are responding to L4 in different ways for different reasons. I represent the group that actually likes L4 as a program, but has been so put off by how poorly I was handled as a customer in the purchasing/installation process. Because of this a dark cloud overshadows all the good features of L4. To compound this, when the clouds seem to be parting and I am prepared to move on, some new user posts their “installation nightmares” and I am reminded again of all the reasons I was so put off in the first place.

 What make this even worse is to realize that after 4 weeks, the information that a customer needs to know is not placed on the product page, but what is available is found only on the support page or even worse in the wiki or forum. THERE IS NOT EVEN A LINK TO THE FAQ’s on the main product page!

 I couldn’t believe that someone had the nerve in this forum to suggest that all those who are having problem with the software are at fault because they didn’t read the support page, search the forum posts or the wiki. This post misses the whole point, a company shouldn’t require their customers to have to do this much “research” just to install their software.

 Logos use to be the type of company that didn’t require their customers to search forums, read reviews and a wiki, you could trust them. I am sure there was a time when Tiger Wood’s wife did not feel it was necessary to check his cell phone, but now that the trust has been broken she has to do some “investigation.” Prior to the launch of L4 I did not feel it was necessary to do research before purchasing a Logos product, I trusted them. Monday morning, November 2, I just got on the phone and ordered. The thought never occurred to me that I needed to do so “research” first. Now things have change and I am very saddened by this. Trust is a very difficult thing to gain and it is a rare thing to find, especially in a software company. I am not so much a lover of L3 as the company the produced L3.

 In the spirit of trying to be helpful to Logos, and believe me I really am trying to be helpful, here is a list of things that would have made and will still make a difference for me (trust can be regained):

 Missing Features - If an upgrade is not feature complete or is missing a major feature from the previous version this should be clearly noted on the product’s main page or in a link prominently displayed on that main page. When people purchase a produce, it is only fair that they know these things.

 Downloads - Customers need to be clearly informed on the main product page and in the installation process about total download sizes and times. On November 2, there was not even the basic download size listed on the product page. The current number is a start, but it fails to inform the customer that they may have addition downloads. My total download was over 15 GBs!

Customer Control - Customers need to have more control over what is download and when. From all that we have heard some international customers have been greatly inconvenienced by this.

 Installation Location - Customers need to be informed that Logos does not install in the standard location of Windows programs.

 System Requirements - Customers need to be clearly informed of system requirements, especially how much HDD space will be required. They need to be informed that L4 will make a copy of all their L3 resources, so they can expect their HDD space requirements to be even higher if they have a large L3 library.

 Indexing - Customers need to be informed on the main product page and in the installation procedure have long indexing will take. (Here is an example of how knowledge can change a customer’s reaction to a product. Because it took 30 hours for me to download L4 the first time, I had plenty of time to read the forums. There I learned about how long indexing took. When the download finally ended, I was not surprised the time the indexing took and was not bothered by it. However, if I had not been informed of this as some new users are not, my attitude would have been much different. The lesson—no unpleasant surprised for customers.)

 I don’t like the bugs and sluggishness that comes with new software anymore than anyone else, but I like most users understand that this is to be expected in version 1 of any software. What has magnified these issues and turned these minor annoyances into major annoyances is the feeling that Logos has not take care of these basic customer service issues. All of the items in this list should have been there on November 2^nd and the fact that they are still largely hidden to prospective customers make one pause and wonder if the company that produced Logos 3 is the same company that is now producing Logos 4.

Philip Spitzer said:

Bob is listening. He told me so last night at dinner. I'm confident he is taking your well stated comments to heart and applying them to future decisions. I hope your confidence in that last sentence's truth is re-established in the future as well.

Philip,

Two things...

1.) Serving Bob's family and I dinner is NOT the same as "having dinner with Bob"....

2.) Isn't the command "ALT +D" to put focus on the command bar?

Philip Spitzer said:

Command line - Another taste thing, but once you get used to it things become much faster. For instance to close everything ALT + D, ca enter does it for me because I made a layout with nothing and called it ca. To change layouts is all with the keyboard for me.

I have an even easier way to do that. I made a Close All shortcut on my shortcut bar (typed "close all" into the command bar once, and then dragged "Close all" from the drop-down menu onto the shortcut bar), so all I have to do is click that button. I like the icon they use for this command (the one I've circled in red):

Luuk Dondorp said:

Thank you for telling me I got the guts to suggest that ..etc. Yes, it was me doing this. But I didn't say they were fault. And I did NOT say the were fault having problems with the software because they didn't read the info first. What I did say was that they had to stop blame Logos for things going differently than they expected because they didn't read the info or were not willing to look around for information which is available but started complaining immediately.

You would be correct if this information was clearly available from on the product's main page (which it still isn't), from the Logos sales representatives (it clearly was not on November 2nd) or in an information pop-up during installation (which it was not and is still not). To expect customers to have to search around for basic information is unreasonable. I don't have much Patience for people who complain about a product being difficult to assemble if they don't take time to read the instructions, but when a company does not include instructions with the product that is the company's problem not the customer's.

To be fair to you, I think you were writing about a broader range of complains that purchasing and installation issues and I would have to agree in some other areas such as how things are done differently in L4 than in L3, some of the complaints could have been avoided if people had used the help provided. But as far as purchasing and installation goes your arguments are without merit.

My first week of owning L4 was filled with nasty surprises. First a 30 hour download, then an indexing that hung up and I had to restare(I wasn't even able to use the program until late Wednesday evening!), then to learn that certain features that were in L3 would not be available until the second Q2 of 2010. Knowing these things before hand would have made a huge difference for me. What concerns me that after four weeks I have not seen the necessary revision to the product main pages to insure that future customers will not have all the nasty surprises I had. As much as I like L4, I find it hard to recommend it to others because of issues like this. I would be embarrassed if someone I recommended this software had the same bad customer experience I did.

How comes I knew all of these before purchasing and installing L4? And I am not a beta tester nor a computer expert.. But I know that 1+1 = 2

When the info on the website tells me that I can download the upgraded base package and that it would live beside L3 and you can use both and that most of the resources are in the new format and that indexing was for making it fast...then you could figure out that the download would be huge and the indexing of all these new material would take more than a couple of minutes..  (agreed, I have been waiting three days  while indexing Logos for Mac and I even posted and asked this was as expected..even for this alpha version.  The L4 under Fusion on my Mac took only half of the time, but still a long time) The website also told me that not all the L3 features were ready for L4 yet..I remember I have seen a page about missing features. 

Yes and yes..the info was available. So, I think my arguments do have merit. Perhaps the info was not as clear as you might want, And I think your suggestions are well to the point. Logos should have realized that their info must be as crystal clear as possible and easy available in a clear overview. 

It was in the forums I learned that a lot of americans (and others)  do have data caps preventing them to handle these huge downloads easily. I can understand the irritation about that. This could be pevented when Logos had provided for a way to handle this for those who had data caps. (I think there is, because you could choose for the DVD instead of the download option.....)

So, I think that Logos thought it was clear enough but should have known from earlier experiences that you can't go too far providing information and still you have to go a little further...and further.

At the other hand...for example: when Logos did tell the people to be careful choosing the DVD or Download option explaining that downloading could be a hassle because of the data caps..I know for sure that there would be other issues popping up Logos should have taken care of.... for example that after using the DVD you still have to download upgrades and newer versions of the resources.....It is never enough. And I am sure they hate pop-ups as I do. And I think no company want to put any information about possible hassles with their products on the main page! That's where support-pages are for.

Did you know I recommended the software to a dutch friend of mine in the very first weeks..and guess what..he installed it without any problems and is a huge Logos fan already. I am not embarrassed at all, but as happy as can be. 

Richard DeRuiter said:

(I would grant that those links are in a small font and are easy to miss.)

It probably has more to do with my moving directly to the contents page that morning and avoiding the video ever since. I am really sorry I have not revisited that page since that morning. I have been checking the individual package pages frequently if there would be links to FAQ and Missing Features becasue this was such an important issue for me, totally unaware that it was on this other page.

Philip, great first post on some of the great improvements you see in L4 over L3.  Aside from the typical "glass half-empty" folks who wanted to hijack your positives with negatives, I think this thread has been fun to read.  I am missing a lot of the fun in testing the Mac, but I know we will catch up soon brother.

Damian McGrath said:

C'mon Joe. It's not thread hijacking to respond to a thread about perceived positives with an alternative perspective.

IMHO, that is hijacking.  I don't see any point in life to counter a positive with a negative. There are plenty of threads with bug reports, negatives, and simple complaints.  Why some people feel they are obligated to post their negative perspective/experience when the thread was started with a positive, I will never know.

So we will just have to agree to disagree brother. [;)]

Rosie Perera said:

But certainly continuing to discuss whether it was hijacking or not is hijacking. And I'm participating in it too, so I'm just as guilty. ;-)

Well, I refuse to discuss this further...

 

Oh, I just did....

 

 

Ronald,

Any command that the command box will understand can be dragged from the resulting drop down as you type it and dropped on the icon bar.

OOPS. I rescanned and see that Rosie pointed this out. I love it. I hated typing it out. It's the little things that count.

You know, I learned so much in the first two hours of Camp Logos. I was a power user in Libronix. I've been to two seminars and did camp logos 2 on my own. I loved L3. Still do. But my goodness, you have to open your eyes and see this new program! It's amazing! I really really think that the way they released it was great. I was so surprised and even though it took a long time to get it going initially, I am so pleased with all that they've done. Morris said that Bob reads EVERY post.  You have to appreciate this company. They are kickin' butt trying to make the best program for us. Everyone at the conference today was so excited. Unbelievable.

It was a bummer that Bob couldn't be there. Oh imagine that....he had an emergency of a work related variety. I missed you Bob and I LOVE LOGOS!!!

Valerie Pobog said:

You know, I learned so much in the first two hours of Camp Logos.

I wish I could be there. Sounds exciting. Somehow it is too far for us from Europe [:)]

2011/01/03

Hi Thomas,

You said: 

Thomas Black said:

Automatic Updating - No longer do you
have to scour your CD/DVD collection or the FTP site to make sure you're
up to date with the latest incarnations of your books.  Logos does it
for you - while you sleep even.

I had recently purchased a new Logos Resource and I went to "Orders" on my "Account" page and clicked on the order where I had made the purchase and clicked on the Logos 4 download instructions - and it told me that my Resource was already downloaded when I started up Logos 4!  I went to my Library - and sure enough!  My new book was already there, waiting for me to open it up!  I was amazed.  Now normally, I don't like any updates to my computer when I don't know what's being received or transmitted, but in this case, it was quite pleasant to find my book already on my system and in my Library ready to read.

One thing that I do miss from Libronix 3 was the feature of user-controlled syncing of licenses and then being able to backup and restore your licenses.  I haven't seen any of that on Logos 4 - but then too, I just got Logos 4 for Christmas.  [;)]

David

 

David, the only "lacking" feature is the backup of licences on your own computer.

The Syncing happens automatically with the L4 servers.  

I still remain hopeful for backup's but that will go on another thread......