Tag: Windows

Speeding up Logos on Windows

Recent updates to Logos Bible Software for Windows have included an additional feature to speed up the platform’s load time. Users with hard disk (rather than solid-state) drives will notice the biggest improvements. For the present, the feature requires a manual action after each software update, but there are plans to roll this action into the update process in the future to eliminate the additional step.

Instructions and details can be found in this forum thread. On a suggestion that I came across in one of the forums, I’ve created a batch file and then linked to that file from the Logos bookmarks bar to simplify reapplying the enhancement. So, in the batch file, I have:

“[%Path to Logos.exe%]\Logos.exe” /ngen
rem “[%Path to Logos.exe%]\Logos.exe” /unngen

The second line does nothing since it’s currently a remark (“rem”). But, moving the “rem” notation from the second line to the first line and then rerunning the batch file would remove the enhancement if ever that were needed.

Word 2016 introduction for Mac users?

The “for dummies” series has a couple good introductions to Microsoft Word (for all and specifically “for professionals”). But, these texts seem to concentrate on Word as it appears in Windows, which is sometimes surprisingly inconsistent with how ostensibly the same version of Word appears in Mac OS.

The similarly themed “idiot’s guides” series also doesn’t appear to have a text that addresses the current version for Mac users. The Shelly Cashman series text also seems to leave Mac users with less helpful guidance than those running Windows.

Is anyone aware of something that would fit this bill? General introductions to Microsoft Office tend not to have enough detail on Word. So, something specifically geared toward Word 2016 would be ideal.

Digital notekeeping

Michael Hyatt has a good discussion of digital notekeeping tools, a.k.a. “Evernote alternatives.” As even the nomenclature might suggest, Michael opts for Evernote.

I used Evernote for quite some time too but transitioned several months back to OneNote. I haven’t ever gotten particularly sold on Apple devices, so Apple-only alternatives were out by default.

While I enjoyed Evernote, their limiting their “Free” plan to sync with two devices was the main impetus for me to look for a change. I already had OneNote at the Office and via an Office 365 University subscription at home. Plus, OneNote has both iOS and Android apps, as well as a web version, so it was a logical option.

(N.B.: Windows 10 comes by default with the OneNote app installed in a lighter version. But, that version doesn’t seem to allow files to be attached to notes, edited, and resaved immediately in the same note. The file has to be saved elsewhere and then moved back into the note, a workaround about which I wasn’t particularly crazy.)

Over the years, I’d accumulated quite a lot of data in Evernote. So, I was glad to see Microsoft’s Evernote to OneNote importer. Michael’s experience with importing notes was “a complete and utter mess,” but for me, things actually went quite smoothly.

OneNote has also gotten supported by a fairly convenient web clipper. Evernote’s web clipper might be slightly nicer in the abstract, but OneNote’s is definitely close behind. As with Evernote, OneNote also allows for emailing notes into a notebook.

Borrowing a page from the Franklin-Covey book, I’ve taken to setting up my OneNote notebooks in one tab per month. Then, I create a blank page numbered with the date out of that month and use the “subpage” feature to organize notes for that day underneath that main note. Tabs for months other than last month, this month, and next month get moved into an archival notebook for the year.

Very large OneNote notebooks do sometimes seem to have issues syncing to mobile devices. But, in the main, my experience with OneNote has been quite pleasant. It doesn’t have the tagging features that Evernote does, but OneNote’s search function has generally been quite sufficient so that I haven’t found myself wishing for greater tagging functionality. So, if you’ve been looking for a digital notekeeping tool and haven’t yet given OneNote a test run, you may want to give it a try.

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