I’ve used BibleWorks software on my computer since college. I’ve found it very helpful and fairly easy to use once I got the hang of it (there is a little bit of a learning curve to find the BibleWorks way of doing things, but it’s not too bad). It was extremely useful when I was taking Greek last year. BibleWorks is designed primarily around the biblical text itself. It has quite a few English translations, along with multiple Greek and Hebrew texts and language references. But what it doesn’t have is commentaries or much other reference material that is not closely related to the biblical text itself. That’s what makes Logos a great companion product.
I recently picked up a copy of Logos when CBD was having a sale. It’s another Bible-related software package, but instead of being so optimized for the study of biblical texts, it’s more of an electronic library. You can purchase several different levels of the product to start out with, each containing various numbers of electronic texts, and then you can add individual titles or packages at any time from there. They have all kinds of things available, including dictionaries, outlines, topical guides, atlases, word studies, historical and archaeological information, and devotionals. I purchased one of the larger initial sets, and then I’ve added quite a few commentary sets on top of that. I also eventually ended up buying several of the language references that I already had for BibleWorks in the Logos format so that I could have them available in both programs. It’s kind of a drag to buy the same thing twice just in two different formats, but having references like the BDAG (Greek lexicon) and HALOT (Hebrew lexicon) available with a single click in each product is extremely convenient.
So while I still love BibleWorks and everything that it offers, I’ve really found Logos to be a great second program to have alongside it. If I had to choose just one I would probably select BibleWorks (largely because of my interest in the original languages), but I’m very glad that I don’t have to choose one or the other.
Rue Plumet 
February 9, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Glad you found a system that works for you, Brad. We strive to make Logos Bible Software a one-stop platform for language study and theological study…but at the same time realize that not everyone uses it that way, and that’s okay.
I’d be interested in your thoughts comparing the functionality and utility of works like BDAG and HALOT in the two platforms. Are there things you like better about the implementation of, say, BDAG on either platform?
Daniel Foster
Logos Bible Software
February 11, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Daniel,
Answering that question just reminds me how happy I am that I can have both products on my machine! To me, the very best thing about Logos is the incredibly deep linking. For example, when I’m reading an entry in BDAG, for many of the Greek grammar references (such as BDF) I can just hover or click on the link and read the corresponding information in the grammar (for the non-Logos people out there, that’s because I also own licenses for a bunch of the standard Greek grammars). That’s an awesome capability! I also like how the Logos version of BDAG has hover spots for the vast majority of abbreviations used in the definitions. Those are super handy when I can’t quite remember what a particular abbreviation is (because BDAG uses LOTS of them).
And I know Logos will love this little piece of advertisement, but the more resources I buy, the better using Logos becomes because more and more links become “live”. I bought BDAG as one of my earlier purchases in Logos, and then when I bought a couple of Greek grammars later on, not only did I get some great new reference material, but it even made BDAG better because of the new links that became available. It’s really quite addicting. :-)
Now BibleWorks doesn’t have all of the linking that Logos does. Even though I have some of the same grammars in BibleWorks, I have to go manually look up the information when I see a reference in BDAG because there is no live link. That’s why I was so glad to discover Logos as an additional tool to have on my machine. Once you’ve purchased a good set of standard references, the linking in Logos is truly amazing.
As another plus for Logos (and as implied in my original post), there are quite a few books and commentary sets that I really appreciate having in electronic format that are simply not available in BibleWorks. I don’t think that is a “fault” of BibleWorks exactly, because it is clearly not the market they are going after, but I do enjoy having them available in Logos.
However, there are two things I really like about BibleWorks that Logos does not have. First, I really like the 3-pane layout in BibleWorks: search, Bible passage, and then information about the passage or individual words in the passage. That just makes sense to me and it is really easy to use. I haven’t been able to recreate a workspace in Logos that does the same thing for me. Now, to be fair, I used BibleWorks for years before I ever got a copy of Logos, so perhaps my familiarity with that interface makes me like it more. But the interface really does work well.
The other thing I love about BibleWorks is that it is incredibly fast at almost everything it does. Generally when I am working in BibleWorks I feel like I can do almost anything I need to do almost instantly. And even though 3.0 is a *huge* improvement over previous versions, Logos is still considerably slower. And I don’t think that’s because of my machine. I have a dual core processor, 4 gigs of RAM, SATA 3.0 Gb/s NCQ hard drives in a raid setup, and I’m running XP Pro. The machine is plenty fast, but there are still a lot of things in Logos that just take a long time to run. BibleWorks being crazy fast is the reason I almost always open it first to do my primary work, then open Logos later to do further analysis. If Logos ran as fast as BibleWorks, that would go a long way towards changing my opinion between the two. I have no idea how BibleWorks gets everything to run so fast. Perhaps they just keep enormous index files on disk whereas Logos builds the equivalent information on the fly when you try to do a search? I really have no idea, but the difference between the two is pretty clear.