Accordance Bible Software Review
Azucena Jewels
This is not a troll. I'm a long term Accordance owner and Logos Owner. I've mostly done bible studies manually using my NASV Bible (1977 based on preference) I've had since College (my first Bible long since having met it's end). In any case I've been placed in a wonderful situation where I can upgrade one, and since earlier this year found my password for my Accordance account (and upgraded to Triple Discoverer) . I'm a layperson interested in learning Hebrew and Greek and adding Original Texts to my Study process. For Sake of comparison I currently have Logos Gold (Reformed Edition). I'm not asking which one is Better (honestly I view this as the old Photography argument as Nikon vs Canon), I just have a couple of questions:
#1 Ignoring the "worship leader" junk that Logos offers (which even if I thought was great, since I'm not an elder of leading a corporate bible study means absolutely nothing to me), What package in Accordance would be the closest approximation to the Logos Gold package.
#2 Based on my own research with both, and considering that I'm on Windows and not Mac, what am I missing from a comparison if I were to boil it down to :
A ) Logos has a much larger overall library per package (though less English Bibles, and a flashier UI capable of doing everything that Accordance Does (presuming you are willing to put in the work to build your layouts). It is also a hog, such that if you do a word search the response time is measured in seconds even on an i7 8 core machine running with 32 GB of RAM and NVME SSD's.
B ) Accordance has a generally smaller library, and less direct access to a vast digital library. It also has much more focused UI, and as such is more intuitive to use. In addition on a computer of similar power to the one running logos it has, effective, instantaneous response on searches.
If I'm missing something above, please let me know. I would also appreciate someone who might be able to explain what benefits or differences there might be for someone trying to learn to read Ancient Hebrew or Greek of the products.
Based on my experience if you have Triple Discoverer, then I would stick with that. Then look at the individual books you have in Logos that you don't have in Accordance and look at just adding those, unless there's a package that includes those books and that you can upgrade to for less than the sum of the individual books. Remember that Accordance often gives cross-grades, which means a discount if you show them your proof of ownership in Logos.
Accordance customer service is second to none. I think Logos is often good too, but it feels like all of the people I've dealt with in Accordance take my satisfaction as their personal goal as if they owned the company themselves.
For work in the original languages, Logos cannot do everything that Accordance can do (the inverse is also true BTW). Logos tends to have database tools built from tagged texts; Accordance will tend to have tools that allow you to collect your own data from their tagged text. For example, in working with intertextuality, Logos has a resource and tagging that identifies the quotes, allusions and inferences between the testaments. Accordance has the inference command, nothing like it in Logos with respect to granularity. The text command in Accordance opens up ways to query texts that simply are not possible in Logos.
On the other hand, Logos' Word Study tool is top notch. I can get all the information in Accordance, but its so quick in Logos! The folks at Faithlife are all in on tagging texts. I love the tagging they have done with things like pronoun antecedents. Want to find every time Jesus spoke about something, the search is the best (only?) way to answer the question since it will pick up pronouns that refer to Jesus.
Before I say anything else I would like to preface that I never owned Logos. I am a prior BibleWorks user who moved to Accordance after BibleWorks went under. I would also just like to say that the following is just my personal experience and I know nothing further than that.
When I was in undergrad these Logos reps would always come around to my Greek class trying to get us to buy their software. The whole experience really turned me off since I kept getting this "let's make a sale!" aura from the reps and it seemed to be more about money than about learning the text. In grad school I discovered BibleWorks and I didn't get that same feel.
Then after BibleWorks shut their doors I actually did contact Logos since I didn't know what to do, and to be honest, they did not respond to my email. I just had a funny feeling about the whole thing and so I didn't contact them again. Again, that was just my personal experience.
I then remembered that a professor of mine in grad school used Accordance, so I contacted them and their sales department was so kind and helpful I wound up buying Accordance on the spot. As Kevin also mentioned above, I was able to get discounts after providing proof of ownership of BibleWorks products, but I have since bought far more from Accordance than I ever had with BibleWorks.
I have no idea if Logos does this or not, but another thing I love about Accordance is that they regularly have seminars for free. The seminars are always really interesting and something I really appreciate.
So that is my 2 cents as well.
Take care,
I came from a very basic windows zondervan package to accordance when i switched to mac and was blown away by all the syncing to the underlying original languages.
I think your interests sound similar to mine. When i switched i got a basic original language package then when finances and knowledge increased i upgraded to greek/hebrew learner and then when finances and knowledge increased i upgraded to the greek/hebrew discoverer because that was the most cost efficient way to get the lxx material I was finding i missed from my original packages. I usually time my upgrade package to the program upgrade.
As kevin has said, i have invested in all kinds of other resources which i wanted which are typically not in packages such as nidntt and nidott lexicons, wbc and nivac Commentaries and study bibles and beale's nt use of ot and comfort and my feelings are look at the packages and see what you actually will use or would like to have and let that be your guide. (Also as kevin mentioned, check out the excellent sales which we currently get weekly. I believe Bdag and halot are the lexicons recommended by seminaries but they only feature in the pro packages yet you can add them now as they are on sale.)
i really appreciate accordance for being able to start small and build as your interests broaden and not get lots of resources i will never use. (But there are resources in the other product i would love to have in accordance so accordance also teaches you practically the gift of patience. )
That is definitely one of my main questions if not my main question. The reason being that for all the English components I can fairly easily test that component myself. Thing is with Original Texts is I have no way of truly comparing that because I lack the training in Greek and Hebrew, though that is in the plan, to study.
About the only question I guess I have left is if there is a way to know what is on the Roadmap for additional English books. The collection within Accordance is decidedly well odd, some I would not expect to be there at all, others that are in the public domain are not available. Is this something I could get answered via Support?
Also, is there any calculator for the Pro line and above? Since at that point every component is split out separately? Also outside of enhance libraries, are their Functional differences for Accordance beyond say the Discoverer edition?
It is possible to convert pdf texts into user tools as seen on the Accordance Exchange. You will find folk on the forum that have experience doing this. There are other format conversions possible, but the steps are a bit more involved.
The free demo lite version has some restrictions in functionality.
once you get a paid version, you get all functionality, no difference between pro and starter. Also no differences in functionality between windows and mac.
mobile devices are getting new functionality but are not as comprehensive or feature rich as the main os and will take time To get new features and at the moment dont look like they will ever achieve parity due to os and other limitations Though we live in hope!
As a longtime Windows guy who kind of knows what he is doing on a PC, I'm not quite sure what to make of those PC/Mac commercials. As a teacher at a seminary, in years past, I've hardly had any students who use Macs, so I didn't feel I was doing much of an injustice by simply pointing them to Accordance Bible software and letting them figure it out on their own. After all, if Macs are so great, they shouldn't need my help...
Well, this year, with a somewhat younger average age in our incoming class, I'm faced with nearly a third of them using Macs. So, I realized it would help if I knew what they would (or not) be able to do with the Accordance software. After a 90 minute online tutorial by David Lang, Helen Brown of Accordance graciously has sent me an evaluation copy of Accordance7.4, Scholar's Collection Core Bundle. (Actually, I downloaded and installed the Accordance 8.0program, but pre-OS X Mac systems and Mac emulations require the 7.4 CD insteadof the 8.0 DVD.) For the sake of other intrepid PC sorts who want to use Accordance, I'll document setup steps and myexperiences in two parts. I'll start here with the setup which actually involvestwo separate processes: installing a Mac Emulator and then installing theAccordance program.
First, one needs to get the Basilisk Mac Emulator (available here) which acts like Mac OS 7.5. That's a bit old for a Mac OS, but the only significant shortcoming I can determine is the 3D viewing if you have the Bible Atlas module. There are two versions of the emulator covering everything from Win95 > Vista. Be sure to download the manual as well.
Once you have the Emulator installed, run the BasiliskIIGUI.exe. You really need to follow the Emulator PDF manual closely. (As Rick notes in the comments on the blog post, if I had read the manual more closely, I might have saved myself some work.)
Under Memory, I set 256 Mb RAM, but trying to run the Atlas with other stuff required me to set it higher to 400Mb.
Note that you have to set up a virtual hard drive, 1 or even 2 GB is best. (NOTE below!)
For my WinXP (SP3) system, I seemed to get the best results using these settings: