In my personal categorization of Bible Software there are three main classes – First, you have the commerical “bigwigs” – Logos, QuickVerse, Bibleworks, etc. Some of these are good, some are bad. Most cost hundreds of dollars.
Second, you have “commercial but affordable software”, usually written by one person or a small group of people. There are actually very few Bible software packages that fall into this class that I could find, though SwordSearcher is one of them.
Third, you have freeware and shareware packages, also usually written by a small group of people. Packages in this class range from awful to very good, with the best one being eSword.
In my experience, for the average lay person wanting to engage in a deeper study of Scripture, the quality of software in the latter two classes often rivals that of the big commercial hotshots.
I found out the hard way. After spending $200 on one of the big packages I found myself continuously frustrated attempting to do even the basics – searching, cross referencing, storing of my own notes, etc. I held out longer than I should have simply because I spent so much money on the dumb thing. But in the end the pain won out and I sold it to some poor soul on eBay.
But now what to do? SwordSearcher to the rescue! For the money, SwordSearch is one of the best values out there. It’s strengths are its clean and efficient interface and its search options.
The effectiveness and ease of Swordsearcher’s various search and indexing features simply wipes the floor with any other package I’ve used, freeware, shareware, or commercial. Its the only product I found that allows you to search for a specific word, topic, or verse reference across all Bibles, books, commentaries, and personal study notes with one fell swoop.
Another nice feature is it’s Verse List, which consolidates all the verses from a search, or from a particular book entry, into its own pane. This allows you to actually do more with the verses without losing sight of the original list or having to work around a search results popup window.
It comes with a wide range of commentaries, dictionaries, and books, some more useful than others. However, the software is KJV-only, so if you’re looking to compare various translations you won’t find it here. This may or may not be a negative for you.
The only other real negative that I could find is the included maps and images – they are old and archaic, and seem very out of place in such an otherwise fine product. This is easily remedied, however, by visting the swordsearcher_help yahoo group and downloading some updated maps and images. These are the only two reasons it did not garner a 5-star rating from me.
I found SwordSearcher to be such a compelling product that I use it almost exclusively for my day-to-day study and collection of my personal commentary, notes, and illustrations.
All in all, I highly recommend SwordSearcher Bible Software.