Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true
(Acts 17:11)

Latest version:
2.12s Jul 24,'06

1. Summary of information about other Bible software
   This is only a partial list. BerBible isn't for everyone, so I've included links to browse some of what is available. There are some comments included related to their strong points, but not extensive. Software changes and evolves, so some of these observations may become obsolete [this page last updated on 2004-Jul-06].
   • List of commercial Bible software with which I'm more or less familiar
   • List of freeware Bible software with which I'm more or less familiar
   • Criteria by which to evaluate which Bible software is suitable for you
   • Non-objective distinctives of BerBible compared to other Bible software
   
2. Freeware Bible software
   
   • BerBible
   • In the beginning was The Word
     Fast and very usable with great features. Developed by a BerBible collaborator (Hi Costas :-) with a version specifically for Greek users.
   • The CrossWire Society
     Linux and Windows. Very comprehensive resources (Bibles, commentaries, non-English texts, etc). Open Source GPL.
   • e-Sword
     Very comprehensive resources (Bibles, commentaries, non-English texts, etc).
3. Commercial (and/or shareware) Bible software
   
   • Bible Explorer / WordSearch
   • Logos
   • BibleWorks
   • QuickVerse
   • Ilumina Gold
   • PocketBible (for pda's)
4. Other Bible software (not clear to me if commercial/shareware or freeware)
   
   • Online Bible
   • E4 (no free download; shipping + handling)
   • CBS Christian Bible Scholar
     Fast and very usable with great features. Developed by a BerBible collaborator (Hi David :-). Free and shareware versions available.
   
5. Evaluation criteria
   
   • Cost. Some is free or very low cost. Others can cost many hundreds or even thousands of $.
   • Bible text availability. The most popular, best known modern English Bibles tend to only be available from commercial Bible software (NIV, NKJV, etc.) There is typically a hefty licensing fee to make these Bibles available.
     There are a large number of lesser known modern English Bibles that have restricted availability (such as MKJV, KJ21, LITV, etc). Several freeware Bible websites have made arrangements to make these Bibles available while still maintaining the publishers' intellectual property. This is typically done with compression and/or encryption. You can use these Bible texts within the associated software, but not distribute otherwise.
     Also, there are quite a few public domain Bible texts, These tend to be older Bibles for which any copyright has expired (KJV, ASV, etc.) or modern English Bibles which were specifically translated with the intent of making them freely available (AKJV, BBE, WEB, etc).
   • Availability of Bible in non-English languages. There is a wide range in this category. To my limited awareness, e-Sword and The CrossWire Society are the leaders in this category.
   • Scholar capabilities. Fuller featured Bible software provides links to commentaries, dictionaries, maps, devotionals, word studies, etc. Some of these resources are public domain, but many have their own copyright restrictions.
   • Other features: footnotes, cross references, note-taking, etc.
   • Your level of computer literacy. There tends to be a tradeoff between number of features and ease of use. For the less than computer literate person, some of the Bible software can be rather baffling to get started with.
   • Ease of use. Even if you are relatively computer literate, some Bible software is intuitive and some isn't.
   • Performance of your computer. Some fuller featured Bible software may be quite sluggish on less than modern computers. It can take a minute or more to load/launch, and the Search function can be almost unusable because it takes so long.
   • Internet connectivity and download size. There is a wide range of how big the Starter Kit is for Bible software. With a fast, broadband Internet connection, this is less of a factor. If your Internet connection is slow, unreliable, and/or expensive, it can be a real concern with 10 meg files and larger.
     Note that the resources are typically BIG files. A plaintext New Testament plus Old Testament is about 4 meg (compresses drastically to about 1 meg). If you anticipate acquiring a relatively full set of Bible texts, commentaries, and other resources, the cummulative downloads can get to 100's of megabytes.
   • Computer other than Windows. If you are using a Macintosh or Linux, your choices are restricted compared to Windows.
   • Support. Some freeware is not much more than a hobby to its developer(s).
   • Open Source and collaborative development.
   
6. BerBible strong points compared to other Bible software (not objective :-)
   See home page, but a restatement is that BerBible is free, very intuitive (basic features are easy to use), very fast on dinosaur computers, and involves a quite small download for the Starter Kit.
7. What limitations does BerBible have?
   A lot. Mea culpa.
   As of ver 2.00n [Mar, 2005], there are no provisions for commentaries, note taking, or dictionaries. Only a limited number of public domain Bibles are usable. Other freeware Bibles have many more Bible texts available. BerBible doesn't use embedded tags to delineate paragraphs, Strong's numbers, words of Christ in red, footnotes, cross-references, etc. Realistically, if you are computer literate, want to do relatively sophisticated things with Bible software, have a relatively modern computer, need modern English Bible translation that aren't public domain (NIV, ESV, NKJV, etc.), and have an adequate budget, there are better choices besides BerBible. Otherwise, BerBible will probably meet your needs quite satisfactorily.