Logos Bible Software
Hello Everbody!
As many of you know, ChristianBlog.Com has been using the "RefTagger" feature that allows you to have the ability to quickly view a Bible verse by simply moving your mouse over any red-highlighted Bible verses. This has been a great addition to ChristianBlog.Com and it is something I use myself almost every time I am reading a blog that has references to Scripture!
One of the features of the RefTagger is called "Enable Logos Libronix" which is a feature we have turned off by default, but is very sweet for those who use the Libronix software! The Libronix software is the heart of the "Logos Bible Software" that is the #1 rated Bible software in the world. For anybody who has any of the Logos software installed, you should really take a moment and enable the feature called "Enable Logos Libronix" because doing so will allow you to very quickly start up the Logos software and have it directly take you to the given Bible verse within the Logos software itself! Very cool feature!
Logos Bible Software:
Awhile back I was given a copy of the "Scholar's Library" edition of the Logos Bible Software. I have spent the last couple of months giving it an honest review and thought it was time to share my thoughts of this software with the world.
To watch a short video of some of what Logos Bible Software can do, please watch their software demo!
Logos has many different versions of their software!
I'd like to share a few of them with you:
"Christian Home" edition contains 68 titles worth more than $1,200.00 in equivalent print editions! From Bible study to marriage, prayer, faith, parenting, home school, devotions, and so much more! The Christian Home Library takes the work out of Bible study and helps you discover biblical answers to life's questions. This is a great place to start your electronic Bible study library, especially since you can add books to your library any time you want! This item is normally priced as $149.95 but if you buy it from clicking to their website from ChristianBlog.Com (click this link) you can get it for 25% off - only $112.46!
"Bible Study Library" edition contains nearly 170 titles worth almost $2,800.00 in equivalent print editions! Everything you need to be a better Small Group Leader, Sunday School Teacher, or Youth Leader. The Bible Study Library gives you the tools to really dig into specific passages or topics in the Bible and come away with fresh insight and understanding, whether it is for personal study and devotions or for creating a lesson for your next group meeting. This item is normally priced as $259.95 but if you buy it from clicking to their website from ChristianBlog.Com (click this link) you can get it for 25% off - only $194.96!
"Leader's Library" edition contains 230+ titles worth over $3,600.00 in equivalent print editions! The most comprehensive collection of tools and resources available for busy pastors, the Leader's Library is specifically targeted for Pastors and Leaders. No matter what the passage or area of study, the Leader's Library provides a wealth of in-depth and easy-to-find Bible knowledge. This item is normally priced as $309.95 but if you buy it from clicking to their website from ChristianBlog.Com (click this link) you can get it for 25% off - only $232.46!
once I had the product in-hand and began to see the true wealth of knowledge, the scope of what it includes, the pureness of simplicity, and the drastic amount of time I saved doing research, I quickly became convinced that sometimes, you really do get what you pay for!
"Scholar's Library" edition contains 330+ titles worth more than $6,100.00 in equivalent print editions! Their #1 Best-Selling collection, Scholar's Library is a value-priced collection of texts and tools for serious Bible study using Greek, Hebrew, and English resources. Scholar's Library gives you the tools to really dig deep into specific passages or topics in the Bible and come away with fresh insight and understanding, whether it is for personal study and devotions or for creating a lesson for your next Bible study. With payments from around $45 per month, this is our best value, best budget fit, and our best seller! This item is normally priced as $629.95 but if you buy it from clicking to their website from ChristianBlog.Com (click this link) you can get it for 25% off - only $472.46!
"Scholar's Library: Silver " edition contains 520+ titles worth more than $8,400.00 in equivalent print editions! Scholar's Library: Silver puts an entire bookcase of Bibles and Bible reference titles one mouse-click away. This package provides a massive electronic library for the working pastor-and all for as little as $68 a month! This item is normally priced as $999.95 but if you buy it from clicking to their website from ChristianBlog.Com (click this link) you can get it for 25% off - only $749.96!
"Scholar's Library: Gold" edition contains 700+ titles worth more than $11,700.00 in equivalent print editions! Scholar's Gold is the biggest and best library we have ever assembled. If you want to bypass years of picking out titles one by one and paying full retail, start with the best today! It contains everything in all the other collections listed on this page combined and so much more-and all for as little as $95 a month! If you want it all, this is the best tool at the best price you may ever see. Scholar's Library Gold has all the right texts, and all the right tools to propel your Bible study to the next level. There's no better choice for the serious Bible student. This item is normally priced as $1379.95 but if you buy it from clicking to their website from ChristianBlog.Com (click this link) you can get it for 25% off - only $1034.96!
Now I am not going to sit here and tell you that this software is cheap... because even I went "ouch" the first time I saw their price tag. However, once I had the product in-hand and began to see the true wealth of knowledge, the scope of what it includes, the pureness of simplicity, and the drastic amount of time I saved doing research, I quickly became convinced that sometimes, you really do get what you pay for!
If I could afford it, I would buy a license for every pastor in my fellowship here were I live! For pastors, their Scholar Library series should not be a quick of "if I can afford it" but more a matter of "I've GOT to save up to buy this!" -- even better yet, I think every board member of every church in America should pull together and throw a hundred bucks or two into a hat and buy this software for their pastors!
My History With Bible Software:
The heart of this blog review is the Logos Bible Software so I naturally want to remain focused on it. However I want to share my history with other Bible software, as I have over 15 years experience in using Bible software.
For the better part of 10 years I used the same piece of Bible software that I had come to love and very much enjoy! I had amassed 85 different Bible translations (for more than what Logos Bible Software seems to offers) and 735 "add-on" packages (commentaries, maps, studies, dictionaries, etcetera) which I gathered over the years.
So for me to even consider trying another Bible software package... well, it was very hard for me to do.
After having used this other Bible software for many years, and now having used the Logos Bible Software for a couple of months, I (naturally, and of course) find myself missing two features from the other Bible software that Logos Bible Software (does not seem??) to have.
Without a doubt the most feature I wish Logos Bible Software had is a fast and easy "translation tab" (screen shot from the other software I've used) to be able to quickly change translations. Maybe I just have not found the "how" to do that in the Logos Bible Software but I really do which it was there, or that I could find it!
The second feature is an "online community following". By that I mean this: The other software I used was a free piece of software and allowed the ability for anybody to write additional resources (bibles, commentaries, etc) and published them for free downloads. There are a number of website dedicated to providing these free resources (which is how I acquired over 700 resources). While the base software of the Logos Bible Software, Libronix, I have been told is a free piece of software, it does no good without having resources for the software, and that requires buying the resources from Logos. I have not yet been able to find any "online community" where folks publish free software add-ons for the Libronix/Logos Bible software.
My Personal Review of the Logos Bible Software:
Let me start by saying this: The Logos Bible Study package I have, the Scholar's Library is WAY to huge for me to give a complete review of! It would take me months and months of writing to be able to cover all of the features it has - it really is that amazing and that huge!
As I do not have months and months of time to write a complete review, what I would like to do is to try to highlight a few of the features of Logos Bible Software that I personally went "wow" when I first saw it, along with some of the features that I find myself opening up (or just leaving it open all day) the software to be able to access. Like most software, I find myself using maybe 20-30% of the software on a regular basis (i.e.: every time I open the software), another 10-20% of the software on a semi regular basis (i.e.: say, every month or so) and the rest of it I almost never use - simply because the software package I have, the "Scholar's Library", is serious overkill for the type of ministry that I do now (that being, the owner of a software company that ministers to pastors, churches, and Christians throughout the English speaking world), but back in the days when I was a minister within the four-walls of a church, I would have to say that I would have probably been using in excess of 75-80% of the features of the "Scholar's Library" package!
I cannot tell you the amount of times I have had a handful of different translations of the Bible sitting on my study desk opened to the same passage, and me trying to figure out the exact word-difference between them! Well, I am here to say "NO MORE TO THAT"!
This might seem odd, but my favorite feature of the Logos Bible Software is it's "Compare Parallel Bible Versions" feature! Yes, I know... a $629.95 piece of software with over 330 titles worth more than $6,100.00 in equivalent print editions... and my favorite feature is a comparative translation feature. LOL Sad, but true.
Let me show you a screenshot of this really sweet feature!
Is that cool or what!
I cannot tell you the amount of times I have had a handful of different translations of the Bible sitting on my study desk opened to the same passage, and me trying to figure out the exact word-difference between them! Well, I am here to say "NO MORE TO THAT" hallelujah!
The Logos Bible Software makes it so easy to see the exact word differences... via color backgrounds for the differences of each word in each translation!
Moving on...
When you first open up the Logos Bible Software you see what they call the "Bible Study Starter" which is sort of the hearts and brains of the software. From here you can type in a specific Bible reference (say, 1 John 1:7), or you can type in a story from the Bible (say: "Jesus walks on on water" or a whole host of other things that might make you want to use Bible software!
Here is what it looks like:
If I type into the "Study Passage" section something such as "1 John 1:7" and press the big "Go" button the following will happen:
1) It will open a new side window (on the right-top-side of the screen) with my favorite Bible Translation (you can set what your favorite translation is)
2) It will do a search within all of the major resources of the software and present them in a window (on the left-side of the screen)
3) If I click on any of the resources (on the left-side of the screen) it will open that other resources up in a new window (on the right-bottom-side of the screen)
So it would end up looking something like this:
In less than 5 or so seconds I have access to a wealth of knowledge that is truly unbelievable! There is very little that I could not learn about 1 John 1:7 from the resources presented to me by the Logos Bible Software!
That said, I have had two main issues with it.
First, the way that the whole windows system (left side, right side, bottom right, top right, windows behind windows) is pretty annoying. I've been using Microsoft Windows since it was first released (anybody else remember when we didn't even have Windows lol) and I have never ever had something confuse me as much as this software does. I am constantly "looking" for that "lost window" that I just seemed to have open and is now poof-gone. Hmm. As a software engineer myself I can totally understand that the presentation of information can be a make-it-or-break-it situation, and when you are dealing with the wealth of information that the Logos Bible Software has within it, I am not sure if there is a "perfect way" to handle all of the different windows... but man do I wish I could figure out the way they do things. At times it seems as if they are hiding to many windows behind windows and that is just not something I have been able to get use to, even after a few months of using this software.
Second, it does not really seem to be able to find the type of "searching" that I find myself searching for.
Here are a few examples of things I have tried to search for that the software does not find at all - yet should.
"Levitical vow" -- zero results - wow!
"Nazarite vow" -- it finds it within the "Study Passage" section but the "Study Word" and "Study Topic" both return zero results - what's up with that??
"peter walks on water" -- Yes, peter DID walk on water... so how about some results for that? Nadda one.
"woman at the well" -- This is from John 4 and not a single section of the "Bible Study Starter" returns any results. Yet when you open up John 4 in a Bible translation (again, I use the NKJV for my testing) it says it right there in bold print:
Why it fails to detect something so common is something I just do not at all understand.
Now if I type in "Samaritan woman" I do get a result... but if I'm really tired or don't know that the women at the well was a Samaritan... I guess I'd just be out of luck 
So, those are the only two issues I have with the amazing "Bible Study Starter" feature! It is, without a doubt, a truly powerful search engine! I wish it had better indexing, but, at the end of the day it doesn't exactly have a built-in Google indexer, eh.
Ok I would like to go back to the "Bible Study Starter" and again type in "1 John 1:7" to show you something very cool! This is for you pastors out there! One of the sweet things that the Logos Bible Software does is interface with SermonCentral.Com, which I think is the largest online resource in the world for pastoral sermons! Check out what it does when you search for a given item... it actually queries SermonCentral.Com and presents a list of sermons that have been posted there that related to whatever you search for (in this case: 1 John 1:7)
Now how sweet is that pastors! One click access to sermons by both big-name and no-name pastors, right there for you to quickly access! Logos Bible Software also does this for PowerPointSermons.com - for uber fast access to power point presentations!!
The Logos Bible Software is -- without any doubt in my mind -- the best resource I have EVER seen for Greek and Hebrew!
One of the major (really major) features of the Logos Bible Software is the ability to access true and pure Greek and Hebrew! The Logos Bible Software is -- without any doubt in my mind -- the best resource I have EVER seen for Greek and Hebrew! It is, in one word: Awesome!
Let us say for example I want to do a search in the entire Hebrew Bible for "vow". I simply pull up the Hebrew search engine and type in "vow" and here is what I get:
That folks, is pure awesomeness!!
And, if I wanted it for Greek... well, not a problem, it can do that too!
Also for you pastors out there, and one very sweet feature that Logos offers is something called the Sermon File Addin, which will allow you to import your hundreds or thousands of sermons you have already written INTO the Logos Bible Software! When you do so they become an integrated part of the software itself - fully searchable, organized, and all that good stuff that the Logos Bible Software offers! It is not free, but if you have a whole lot of sermons and want to be able to get them organized and integrated into the Logos Bible Software, it is well worth the money! I got it and imported a few sermons I wrote back when I was preaching and it did an excellent job - not to mention my sermons are now in the very software I turn too to help me write my sermons!
Without a doubt one of the greatest features of the Logos Bible Software is the ability to "build your library"! The guys at Logos are pushing out new resources all the time (keep an eye out on the Logos Blog for notifications and announcements and other fun stuff) and once you have the Logos Bible Software installed on your computer -- be it a PC or a Mac -- you can very easily buy new resources that automatically get added into your resource library! I purchased a couple of items the first day I installed Logos Bible Software and have gotten a couple since than. Every time it has worked smoothly and without any issues!
Regardless of whether you buy one of the personal editions such as the "Christian Home" edition or go big and you get the "Scholar's Library: Gold" edition... the desire and ability to add new resources to your library are going to be there, and Logos makes it very easy!
Well folks, I could go on-and-on-and-on with the amazing and awesome features that the Logos Bible Software has, and I hope I have been able to provide a brief introduction to this software for everybody! I know I have highlighted a few annoyances along the way, but that is all they are... annoyance. Not a single one of those annoyances should result in you not considering buying some of the Logos Bible Software - because at the end of it all... I have not gone back to the other Bible software I used for over 10 year! Logos has won me over, and I did not think that was going to be possible!
What Others Are Saying:
Here are just a few of the praises about the Logos Bible Software from names some of you might know!
You can read a whole bunch of other reviews at their product review section of their website!
In Closing:
Now this is a Christian product I WANT to advertise here at ChristianBlog.Com!!
I would just like to close up this review blog with a few quick things:
(1) Without any doubt in my mind - if you can afford to buy ANY of the Logos Bible Software you should seriously consider doing so!
(2) For those of you that enjoy writing Blogs that are Biblical in nature, something I wish I had more time to do, you should REALLY consider picking up one of the mid-level to upper-level editions of the Logos Bible Software! I am 100% convinced that the few publications I have written since I got their software have been dramatically more deep in the Word of God because of the vastness of resources that the Logos Bible Software provided me!
(3) Please take a moment and check out their video demo of their software which can show you more in a very short video than I could ever present within a blog!
(4) If you are not sure which edition of their software might be best for you, please check out their comparison chart!
(5) I have been working with the guys at Logos Bible Software for a few months now and I am convinced that these guys are the real deal! They have a heart for Christ, and a heart for bringing the Word of God and exobiblical works to Christians around the world in electronic format!
(6) ChristianBlog.Com has now become an affiliate of Logos Bible Software! That means that we are able to give our own Members a massive 25% off the products listed at http://www.logos.com/christianblog/! Not only will you get 25% off but ChristianBlog.Com will get a very healthy percentage of the price you pay for us referring you to them! This is a "win-win-win" situation for everybody! As many of you know, I do not take advertisement or product reviews lightly... and for the first time, I can honestly say, "Now this is a Christian product I WANT to advertise here at ChristianBlog.Com!!"
(7) If anybody out there does buy any of the Logos Bible Software, or already has some of their software, I would LOVE to hear your feedback on what you think of it! I am sure that the guys over at Logos are going to be keeping an eye on this blog review as well, so what a great way to be able to share your feedback not only with those of us here at ChristianBlog.Com but the guys at Logos too!
Many many blessings to everybody out there - and a special "Thank you!" to the guys at Logos for the software and the ability to become and affiliate of your truly amazing Bible software!
For Christ's Ministry,
John B. Abela
Founder/Owner, ChristianBlog.Com
|
|
Author: abelajohnb
Location: California USA
Gender: Male
Age: 36
Blog Entries: 154 (archive)
Blog Comments: 2
raised in a private christian school until his senior year, mr. abela has been around the christian faith nearly his entire life. at the age of twenty-two mr. abela was called to the ministry as a lay-minister where he served as a youth minister for nearly seven years and then...
view full biography
God Came, Christ Died, Christ rose, John Was Born, John Believed!...
When Things Just Don'...
Google Finally Taking A H...
Sometimes you are running...
Congrats to tohimbeglory ...
What Is Faith? I Doubt Mo...
Crosses In The Sky!...
7 Amazing Misty Morning P...
Susan Boyle, I Dreamed a ...
Native American Bible...
Encountering Old Friends...
|
Log Into Chatroom 
drinking tea