PC Study Bible Version 4 Complete Reference Library 

Rating:
Summary: Not worth it
Review: (...)
I have been a user of PC Study Bible since version 2 in 1998. Although the new interface in v4 alleviates some of the problems from previous versions, the program is still plagued by unintuitiveness and instability. (I can tell it is simply a new shell over top of the same engine as v3.) It didn't take long for me to crash v4. There is a v4.2 update available that may solve these problems but based on my experiences with older versions, I doubt it.

What bothers me even more is that when I bought my original version back in '98 I was pretty green with knowledge of various Bible study tools (commentaries, lexicons, etc). I have since discovered that over half of the resources that Biblesoft included in this "Complete Reference Library" set are public domain and can be found for free on the web or in other programs. Even the "Bonus CD" has a large percentage of public domain resources.

Even though I still own PCSB I barely touch it anymore. I have discovered e-Sword, a free Bible study program with many more resources available for it, most of which are free, and many of which you would pay for with PCSB. e-Sword is much more user friendly than PCSB. While perhaps not as flexible, it has suited my studies just fine. Plus, there is a very active online community of e-Sword users (primarily on Yahoo Groups) that have made many other resources available for free as well offering help when needed. There are also some free, third party tools available for creating your own resources in e-Sword, similar to the "Authoring System" in PCSB.

Biblesoft seems to be built on a business model of selling you their base "package" products and then charging extra for add-ons, which are the things you really want. Granted, other Bible study software companies do the same thing, but at least they include more (and better) resources in their base package offerings than Biblesoft does. Why pay over $250 for mostly public domain materials? Especially when the software itself isn't all that great.

While PC Study Bible does have merit and offers some things that you can't get for free there are other commercially available products that I think are much better. I highly recommend the Logos Bible Study Software over anything from Biblesoft. You'll be much happier.