Demo Version

Do you think it would be possible to build a "demo version" with, say, two or three commentaries, two or three Bibles, and a couple of resources, but only for a small slice of all the books? IE, suppose you provided one chapter of John, and perhaps one OT chapter, along with the commentaries sliced out to just that one pair of chapters, and perhaps a few relevant topics out of dictionaries, etc?

I think this would help people decide whether or not you like the software, etc. I have a couple of friends on the "cusp" of buying Logos, but they really want to see it in action, play with it, rather than just a video, etc.

Thoughts?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Theophilus

I cannot agree more. Giving away just the engine free, albeit generous, does not help people to cross the threshold to purchase. Sure, the demo video helps, but nothing really beats being able to play around with it yourself.

Interestingly, another company that sells bible software, making use of the Libronix platform, has exactly what you're asking for, Russ. In fact, not only "a small slice of all the books", but 6 complete books! A bible, a commentary, a "bible maps & charts" book, a bible dictionary, a lexicon, and another book - Free and fully functional! But they don't seem to have updated it for ages, not even with the advent of L4. Play around with these for a while, and one (at least one who is serious about using bible software to study the bible) inevitably longs for more resources, not to mention all the excellent features of L4. It wouldn't take one very long to upgrade to one of the Logos base packages. Or perhaps, for this company, they hope that those who use their free demo will purchase from them their line of Libronix-compatible base packages instead.

But I'm sure Logos already knows all that, and having considered the pros and cons, has decided not to offer the free demo.

Sorry Russ, forum guidelines prevent me from linking you to the site. But if a "Free Libronix Demo" aptly summarises what will help your friends, try your friend Google.

Rosie Perera

Someone could build a demo version with all the free books that are available in Logos:

Lexham English Bible (http://www.logos.com/ebooks/details/LEB)
The Abridged Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament (http://www.logos.com/ebooks/details/bdba)
The Scripture Alphabet of Animals (http://www.logos.com/ebooks/details/animalph)
The Love Affairs Of A Bibliomaniac (http://www.logos.com/ebooks/details/labfield)
Russian Bible (http://www.logos.com/ebooks/details/RST)
Finnish Bible (http://www.logos.com/ebooks/details/FI-RAAMATTU)

Anyone stumble upon any others that are totally free?

Russ, you could tell your friends about those free books, they could "buy" them (you do have to go through the purchase process with creating an account and giving a credit card number and all, but you will be charged $0.00), and download the free L4 engine from: http://downloads.logos.com/LBS4/LDLS4Installer/Logos4Setup.exe

That would be enough to get a little flavor of what Logos is like. Lots of features wouldn't work without having bought one of the base packages: Biblical People/Places/Things, many of the Passage Guide sections, Exegetical Guide, Bible Word Study, Text Comparison, Pronunciations, Word Find Puzzle, etc. But they'd be able to use it as an e-book reader with linking and searching capabilities. And I'm preetty sure Home Page, Layouts, Notes, Favorites, Shortcuts, Clippings, and Reading Plans would work.

Robert Pavich

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/117698#Comment_117698

I'm going to be the dissenting voice here...sorry.

I tried (and recommended) this other program before I got Libronix 3. I used the demo version...and it did nothing to let me know just WHY I needed Libronix.

The video's did more for me to let me know what was possible.

John Graves

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/117702#Comment_117702

The "essential library" from (i think) Nelson works pretty good for this. It is only 10-20 dollars depending on where you get it from and it has a good cross section of books. That is what I started off with 5 years ago not knowing what Logos was. It was enough for me to get hooked and get me up to platinum and many other books as well.

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/117698#Comment_117698

Anyone stumble upon any others that are totally free?

I've had links to some of these on my site for a long time,

Proceed to the Nelson
Ministry Services Department and follow the instructions for a copy
of Libronix with some free books:

King James Bible (File Size 12 MB)
King James Bible Commentary (File Size 18
MB)
Nelson's Complete Book of Bible Maps and
Charts (File Size 5.77 MB)
Smith's Bible Dictionary (File Size 18.6
MB)
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (File
Size 19.5 MB)
What Does the Bible Say About? (File Size
4.82 MB)

When you're done with that, proceed over to Logos.com
or click this link to search for the free
books they offer:

Russ White

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/117740#Comment_117740

Thanks! I'll get them into the free books first, and see where it goes from there...

:-)

Russ

Joe Miller

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/117944#Comment_117944

Russ, where do you live? If you get together a group of people, one of our regional reps (like me) could come and give a demo and answer questions.

You can always email me at joe.miller [at] logos.com

Blessings

J.R. Miller

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/118002#Comment_118002

I keep forgetting to post from the right account, so when you see my name (even without the coffee) you know it is me brothers and sisters :-)

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/117740#Comment_117740

Anyone stumble upon any others that are totally free?

When you're done with that, proceed over to Logos.com or click this link to search for the free books they offer:

That link has a one other that I hadn't found:

Gospel Coalition Foundation Documents (http://www.logos.com/ebooks/details/FNDTNLDOCS)

But it is missing some other that I had found:

The Abridged Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament (http://www.logos.com/ebooks/details/bdba)
The Scripture Alphabet of Animals (http://www.logos.com/ebooks/details/animalph)
The Love Affairs Of A Bibliomaniac (http://www.logos.com/ebooks/details/labfield)

Furthermore, some of the things on that link page are not books and are not for L4:

Graphical Query Editor Addin
Libronix DLS Object Model Reference

Another item is no longer available:

Nuevo Comentario Biblico : Siglo Veintiuno

They need to update that free books page!

Ron

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/117740#Comment_117740

Anyone stumble upon any others that are totally free?

I've had links to some of these on my site for a long time,

Proceed to the Nelson
Ministry Services Department and follow the instructions for a copy
of Libronix with some free books:

King James Bible (File Size 12 MB)

King James Bible Commentary (File Size 18
MB)

Nelson's Complete Book of Bible Maps and
Charts (File Size 5.77 MB)

Smith's Bible Dictionary (File Size 18.6
MB)

Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (File
Size 19.5 MB)

What Does the Bible Say About? (File Size
4.82 MB)

When you're done with that, proceed over to Logos.com
or click this link to search for the free
books they offer:

Hey Thomas,

Can you provide instructions for putting some of these in Logos 4? The instructions on the Nelson website are for Logos 3. I'd like to grab the ones that I don't have.

Thanks,

Ron

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/118959#Comment_118959

Hey Thomas,

Can you provide instructions for putting some of these in Logos 4? The instructions on the Nelson website are for Logos 3. I'd like to grab the ones that I don't have.

For the ones that are marked free on Logos' website, just add them to your cart and "purchase" them - the license and books will download the next time you open L4.

For the ones that Nelson is giving away at their own cost, you'll need to install L3, using their update link. Sync your licenses and then open L4 - the same procedure of updating licenses and resources should then occur.

Ron

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/118963#Comment_118963

Yep, I already "purchased" the free ones from Logos. I'll go install L3 and give that a try for the Nelson ones. Thanks! [:)]

Ron

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/118963#Comment_118963

For the ones that Nelson is giving away at their own cost, you'll need to install L3, using their update link. Sync your licenses and then open L4 - the same procedure of updating licenses and resources should then occur.

OK, in L3 I'm being presented with a dialog box asking if I'm a new or an existing user. How do I get set up using my existing L4 credentials? I don't see any obvious option if I choose existing user and I'm guessing I don't want to set up a "new" account.

EDIT - Nevermind, figured it out.

Ron

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/118986#Comment_118986

OK, I must be doing something wrong. I got L3 set up using the same e-mail address that I use for L4. I have the resources unlocked and working in L3. I've done a "sync licenses". I run L4 and run an "Update resources" and it tells me no updates available.

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/119009#Comment_119009

Hmm.

Are you sure the new books are not in your L4 library?

Did you close L4 all the way, restart it, log in and is internet set to on?

Ron

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/119013#Comment_119013

Hmm.

Are you sure the new books are not in your L4 library?

Did you close L4 all the way, restart it, log in and is internet set to on?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes [:)]

I'm trying a "Scan C:\Program Files (x86)\Libronix DLS\Resources" right now, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything either.

It's not a huge deal if I can't get it to work, I just liked the concept of free books [:P]

Maybe I'll call CS during my lunch hour if I haven't gotten it working by then.

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/119015#Comment_119015

CS might be your hope, I wonder if you've somehow gotten two separate licenses going (shouldn't if it's tied to the email addy).

Ron

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/119016#Comment_119016

I think I may have gotten it (by fluke). I had to reboot my computer for some MS updates, and when I came back up, I opened L3 and there was a "tip of the day" saying that I hadn't yet activated my Nelson eBible Demo. I went through that process (though I thought I did that once already) and then re-synced licenses. Upon opening L4, it is now "preparing my library" and indexing, so I'm guessing that it grabbed them.

Thanks for your help Thomas! [:)]

TCBlack

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/119020#Comment_119020

And thanks for posting the process to fix it, that will help someone else you can be sure.

Ron

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/119024#Comment_119024

And thanks for posting the process to fix it, that will help someone else you can be sure.

No problem, and in that context...

In order to activate my L3 to use the same credentials as L4, I chose the option in Account Management for "Existing User" and then "I forgot my code, please send it by e-mail" (or something similar to that). Once I installed the Nelson Demo (which probably should have been done before activating my account in order to avoid this redundant step), I went to account management again and told it to activate over the internet. Once that is all done, you can syncronize licenses and then L4 takes over from there.

Kolen Cheung

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/117698#Comment_117698

This site might help:

http://www.logos.com/freebooks

Anyone stumble upon any others that are totally free?

These are all I know, after Google the Logos:

Lexham English Bible

The Abridged
Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew-English Lexicon of the Old Testament

Gospel Coalition
Foundation Documents

The Scripture Alphabet of
Animals

The Love Affairs Of A
Bibliomaniac

Russian Bible

Finnish Bible

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122196#Comment_122196

Thanks, Kolen. Thomas already told me about the freebooks site and I'd compiled that same list. Some of them I have no interest in owning (Finnish Bible, Gospel Coalition Foundation Documents), but I have "bought" all the others. I studied a year of Russian for Reading in college, so it might be fun to try to plod my way through a simple book of the Bible in that language. Now if only Logos had a Russian dictionary... [:)]

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122253#Comment_122253

I studied a year of Russian for Reading in college

Aha - you get to test whether the search all forms option works in Russian. You are hereby dubbed the Russian Queen Tester. I promise no socialist coup.[:D]

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122257#Comment_122257

I studied a year of Russian for Reading in college

Aha - you get to test whether the search all forms option works in Russian. You are hereby dubbed the Russian Queen Tester. I promise no socialist coup.

Uggh! I don't remember it well enough to do thorough testing (I took that class over 25 years ago and haven't used it since a trip to Russia in 1992), nor do I really have time. All I can tell is that the "match all word forms" option appears not to make any difference. It only seems to be able to do exact text matches in Russian, but you can use wildcards. For example, сотворит is the infinitive for create (as in God created; ברא). If I search for that, it only finds that exact form. However I can search for ([lang ru] сотвор*) and it will find all forms that start with that stem.

Does "match all word forms" work in other languages besides English, Greek and Hebrew? I wouldn't expect Logos developers to have to be experts in the grammar of every single language they publish Bibles in. So maybe this ain't gonna happen. But if they are doing it for other languages, then maybe I'll report it as a bug. I just don't have enough passion for it like you do for all the Coptic stuff and different canons and things to give this Russian Bible a good workout. It has Strongs #s and Tense/Voice/Mood tagging, for example. Am I going to tell whether there are bugs in that tagging? No. I thik we should wait for a native Russian speaking user to do the testing.

Kolen Cheung

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122265#Comment_122265

(I took that class over 25 years ago and haven't used it since a trip to Russia in 1992)

Wow, your pic. doesn't seems like a person that is so old.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122265#Comment_122265

Does "match all word forms" work in other languages besides English, Greek and Hebrew?

No, it doesn't work in Latin, Swedish or Finnish (no I didn't discover all that) ... for the Vulgate I would expect it to work; for other languages I would expect the option to be hidden if it doesn't work.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122281#Comment_122281

for other languages I would expect the option to be hidden if it doesn't work.

Problem is, how do you know when to disable that option on the panel menu? A person might select it first before typing in their search criteria. Or they might enter some search criteria that would allow it, then set that option, then change their search criteria. Once they've typed in some search criteria that include searching in Russian, they might not be likely to go back to look at the panel menu and see if that option they chose is now greyed out -- indicating it won't do anything. Finally, a user might have done a search in Russian just prior, and now be coming back to the Search panel to do a different search (in English) that they want to have "match all word forms" on for. They might try to set that option first before entering the search criteria and they'd be confused about why they can't change it. So I'm not sure how smart Logos could be in the UI to make this work the way users would expect it to all the time.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122286#Comment_122286

Problem is, how do you know when to disable that option on the panel menu?

In general, the search term is prefixed by its language - I would expect finnish:talo to disable the find all forms; I would expect talo to leave the option available. Additionally, when all resources to be searched are in a language that does not support find all forms, the option would be disabled. The disabling would then occur with two actions:

input of selection criteria
input of search resource domain

I think this would cause less confusion than it accepting the query but not executing it as entered.

Kolen Cheung

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122302#Comment_122302

you might want to see this:

http://community.logos.com/forums/p/16185/122804.aspx#122804

In particular, one more free link is given:

http://www.nelsonministryservices.com/nms/dept.asp?dept_id=5076&ref=11537

Kolen Cheung

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122820#Comment_122820

Of course I should have mentioned this:

http://www.logos.com/iphone/support

Morning and
Evening
Necessity
of Prayer
Pilgrim's
Progress
Power
Through Prayer
Selected
Sermons of George Whitefield
Sermons
on Several Occassions
St. Paul
the Traveller and Roman Citizen
Treasury
of Scripture Knowledge
Commentary
Critical & Explanatory on Whole Bible (JFB)
Diving
For Pearls in God's Treasure Chest
Easton's
Bible Dictionary
Imitation
of Christ
In His
Steps
Training
of the Twelve
Why Four
Gospels?
Systematic
Theology (Strong)
New
Nave's Topical Bible
Strong’s
Concise Dictionary of the Words of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek
Testament
An
Introduction to Ecclesiastical Latin
Dictionary
of the Vulgate New Testament
Holbein’s
Bible Woodcuts
The
Summarized Bible: Complete Summary of the Old Testament
The
Summarized Bible: Complete Summary of the New Testament
Traveling
in the Holy Land through the Stereoscope
The New
Testament in Greek (Westcott and Hort)
KJV
Cambridge Paragraph English-Greek Reverse Interlinear
KJV
Cambridge Paragraph English-Hebrew Reverse Interlinear
Glossary
of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology
Lexham
English Bible / New Testament
LEB
English-Greek Reverse Interlinear
LEB
English-Hebrew Reverse Interlinear

But my question is, does the user able to use it in Logos4? And I guess it is a "yes". Please tell me if you know it. If it does, then ask your friend who has an iPhone/iPad to do you a favor, and you can enjoy it in Logos4.

Kolen Cheung

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122840#Comment_122840

One more free book:

the Minor
Prophets by Hampton Keathley IV

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/123129#Comment_123129

One more free book:

the Minor Prophets by Hampton Keathley IV

Thanks, Kolen, for being so diligent in keeping us informed about free Logos books. Would you be willing to maintain a wiki page with the list you have come up with, including links to where people can get these books? I've created the basic template at http://wiki.logos.com/Free_Logos_Books, and you can add more to it if you discover more free books (just click Edit to edit the page, and follow the same wiki formatting conventions you see in what's already there).

After downloading this free Minor Prophets book from Galaxie I was reminded again (with great appreciation) how much simpler it is to aquire new books in Logos 4! It was a multi-step process for this one. 1) "Purchase" the free book from Galaxie including setting up a Galaxie account as a first-time user, with my address and everything even though it's a download only file; fortunately I didn't have to enter my credit card info as it was a free demo resource;. 2) Wait for confirmation email from Galaxie and follow link in the email to download the install program for this book; 3) Run the install program; 4) Go back to Galaxie store, to my account page and click on Unlock Books, and click on Unlock link beside the Minor Prophets book; 5) Enter my Libronix userid (which I had to look up somewhere); 6) Copy the unlock confirmation code generated by that process; 7) Run Libronix; 8) Tools > Unlock Resources, select Minor Prophets and go through the wizard to the link "Unlock by phone" under Galaxie Software; 9) Paste the unlock confirmation code copied in step 6 and click Next. 10) Finally...close Logos 4 and reopen it, and the Minor Prophets is available for download. Whew!! Thank you again, Logos, for making it so much easier in Logos 4!

Kolen Cheung

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/123187#Comment_123187

Thanks, Kolen, for being so diligent in keeping us informed about free Logos books.

Welcome. Though gathering those free books is kind of cool, my primary purpose on gathering them is to introduce Logos to the brothers and sisters in Church. Please pray for us. If Lord is willing, I might spend one Sunday School to introduce resources and Logos in particular to study the Bible to the young people in Church.

Would you be willing to maintain a wiki page with the list you have come up with, including links to where people can get these books? I've created the basic template at http://wiki.logos.com/Free_Logos_Books, and you can add more to it if you discover more free books (just click Edit to edit the page, and follow the same wiki formatting conventions you see in what's already there).

I just did that. It is kind of difficult to format it. It would be much better if we can do it like what we are doing in the forum (adding link is just click and click, not type and type...)

So, for those who want to have a summary on the free resources in Logos, where some of them are actually quite good and still in copy right, please visit http://wiki.logos.com/Free_Logos_Books_%28Demo_Version%29

By the way, I changed the name a bit. Please feel free to change it as well as the content too, especially on the first two sentences to see if you understand it.

Kolen Cheung

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/123250#Comment_123250

By
the way, I found out that the 30 free titles in http://www.logos.com/iphone/support
works on library.logos.com too. So, after
you sign up for an account, there are 60 free resources there, including
the 30 in the list and some other Bible translations.

library.logos.com is actually a great site. If you run it on
Windows, it looks very like the existing Logos4. So, it might be the
best way to present your friend a demo on Logos4.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/123564#Comment_123564

library.logos.com is actually a great site. If you run it on Windows, it looks very like the existing Logos4.

Pretty limited functionality, as far as I can tell. Just opening/reading books and searching. You can access your collections there to search within a collection, but if you search for example within your "English Bibles" collection and it finds hits in multiple Bibles, it doesn't even tell you which one is which.

And it's got none of the other great features that make Logos what it is. I don't think that site would be a very good way to demo Logos 4. I'd rather demo the real thing on my laptop if I want to show it to friends.

Kolen Cheung

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/123610#Comment_123610

You can access your collections there to search within a collection, but if you search for example within your "English Bibles" collection and it finds hits in multiple Bibles, it doesn't even tell you which one is which.

Not true for what I see. Might be a different version. I still need to figure out what kind of browsers/softwares is needed to display something like this.

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/124004#Comment_124004

You can access your collections there to search within a collection, but if you search for example within your "English Bibles" collection and it finds hits in multiple Bibles, it doesn't even tell you which one is which.

Not true for what I see. Might be a different version. I still need to figure out what kind of browsers/softwares is needed to display something like this.

Whoa! That's completely different from what I see. I don't even get the familiar Logos tabs and menus at the top like you. What I get looks like a barebones basic thing for a mobile device:

I'm using IE 8 on Vista. I get the same thing on Firefox. Do we have to install some special plugin to see the web version of Logos?

Darren Paul Wright

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/124008#Comment_124008

Rosie, try http://library.logos.com/?beta=true

Kolen Cheung

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/124009#Comment_124009

Thanks. I forgot that I have click that before.

David Taylor, Jr.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/124009#Comment_124009

Is this not working anymore?

fgh

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/380210#Comment_380210

Is this not working anymore?

What does "this" refer to?

David Taylor, Jr.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/380213#Comment_380213

Sorry, silly me, This referring to the beta online version of LOGOS that appears as the desktop software.

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/380217#Comment_380217

Sorry, silly me, This referring to the beta online version of LOGOS that appears as the desktop software.

I still don't know what you mean.

The Logos software engine (Mac & PC) is free and can be downloaded.
Logos has public beta versions of the software engine. I believe the current beta is equivalent to the release version (4.5c SR2).

If you are wanting links to either of these, please let us know if you are on Mac or PC.

David Taylor, Jr.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/380219#Comment_380219

I am referring to the online browser version mentioned and posted earlier in this thread. I want to be able to access my library at work and I do not like the format or functionality of BIBLIA. I would love to be able to access notes and markings as well as the entire library in the browser.

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/380223#Comment_380223

I am referring to the online browser version mentioned and posted earlier in this thread. I want to be able to access my library at work and I do not like the format or functionality of BIBLIA. I would love to be able to access notes and markings as well as the entire library in the browser.

I don't think so. Biblia replaces the other one.

David Taylor, Jr.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/380234#Comment_380234

That is a shame, Biblia is dissapointing I would love to be able to see notes in it...

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/380250#Comment_380250

That is a shame, Biblia is dissapointing I would love to be able to see notes in it...

I never used the beta version of library.logos.com, but my guess is that notes were not available. I agree with you that notes on a web based interface would be nice… especially when I don't have access to my computers iPad.

Stephen

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/380266#Comment_380266

If someone download the iOS app and registered to get the free books, then downloaded the Logos 4 Engine would they then sync the free resources they got for registering with the iOS version? This could create a "free" demo of L4 that people could try. Shame it's such a pain to download the engine then have to search for free books just to try out L4. I think once most people got the "free" demo version with the 70 or so resources you get with the iOS version that they would eventually buy more.

Use the "free" demo version to bring them into the Logos ecosystem since that's where Logos makes it's money. This is what Apple, Amazon and now Google are doing with the content for their devices.

Just a thought[:D]

JT (alabama24)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/380280#Comment_380280

If someone download the iOS app and registered to get the free books, then downloaded the Logos 4 Engine would they then sync the free resources they got for registering with the iOS version?

Unfortunately no. Good thought though. [:)]

Bohuslav Wojnar

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/122281#Comment_122281

Does "match all word forms" work in other languages besides English, Greek and Hebrew?

No, it doesn't work in Latin, Swedish or Finnish (no I didn't discover all that) ... for the Vulgate I would expect it to work; for other languages I would expect the option to be hidden if it doesn't work.

Rosie and Martha, "Match all word forms" does not work in Czech either. We have to use asterisks etc. plus some creativity to get the needed results. [:(]

P.S. One more FREE resource: Bible, Czech Study Translation excellent modern translation of the Bible with thousands of translation notes and cross-references.