# When to buy Logos



## bobtheman (Nov 4, 2015)

For someone who teaches youth Sunday school and occasionally adult Sunday school, would you recommend the purchase of Logos 6? 

I've never heard of this software until reading through the forums and .. it's fairly expensive. Then the additional books seem to make it even more expensive.


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## Ask Mr. Religion (Nov 4, 2015)

If your only interest is in help with Sunday School type work, you might consider WordSearch as it has an add-on for lesson prep directed towards this sort of work.

https://www.wordsearchbible.com/products/category?category_id=98


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## ooguyx (Nov 4, 2015)

I don't recommend that anyone buy Logos 6 packages until they get their act together with their business model, because it's atrocious. If you really need it, buy the lowest package and then just get whatever books you think you'll use. Generally if you contact the sales department they can discount extra books at the time of base package purchase.


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## Quickened (Nov 5, 2015)

ooguyx said:


> I don't recommend that anyone buy Logos 6 packages until they get their act together with their business model, because it's atrocious. If you really need it, buy the lowest package and then just get whatever books you think you'll use. Generally if you contact the sales department they can discount extra books at the time of base package purchase.



This I will agree with. Their business model is atrocious. Think about what will be of immediate help and get those things only.


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## johnny (Nov 5, 2015)

I love logos,

I just downloaded Rushdoonys NT commentaries last night for half price.
Plus they gave me twenty dollars off "on top" for my birthday this month.
I even found a hidden book bargain, seventy four dollars to five dollars.
It was listed as "hidden" when I put it in the cart 

Yes Logos can be expensive, 
But using this kind of media, including the great ebooks available from the excellent publishers here on puritanboard, 
(and taking adventage of all the specials) is the way to build an excellent library.

I praise God every day for the amazing resources that have been given to our generation.
It really baffles my mind, and it is one of the reasons why we are all on this board.
I mean, being able to comment on a book an hour after it is released worldwide.


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## Romans922 (Nov 5, 2015)

ooguyx said:


> I don't recommend that anyone buy Logos 6 packages until they get their act together with their business model, because it's atrocious.



What's wrong with it (genuinely curious)?


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## puritanpilgrim (Nov 5, 2015)

Logos is great. I would recommend it. I have the Reformed Platinum. But, I would only buy Logos with the academic discount. If you can get that it's 50% off. You need to be enrolled at a Seminary to get the discount. The Reformed works on Logos are great. 

There is another program called Accordance:

http://www.accordancebible.com/Store

They have some less expensive startup packages. But, they don't have as many reformed works and their books tend to be more expensive.

But, I don't know that you need either one to teach Sunday School.

Have you looked at esword? It's free:

http://www.e-sword.net/


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## ooguyx (Nov 8, 2015)

Romans922 said:


> ooguyx said:
> 
> 
> > I don't recommend that anyone buy Logos 6 packages until they get their act together with their business model, because it's atrocious.
> ...



Well any number of things but for the most part they can't decide if they are selling software or books. They say that you are buying books, but they upgrade the software and try to get you to spend big $ on a book package to get the software. Why should you upgrade the software, because of new features they say. How do you get the software? Buy more books. Additionally the bigger book package you buy the more features you get in the software. They've failed at the basics of what a business model is: identifying your revenue sources. in my opinion they should separate the two: sell the software and the upgrades as well; in addition sell books, bundled and unbundled. 

Additionally, they've bought in to two developing issues in the software world: 2 year development cycle and releasing an update before it's fully ready and I think the former is influencing the latter. Bob Pritchett has written about moving the the 2 year cycle and Logos adopting it because it's what the industry was doing. That's understandable as the company will generally want a cash infusion soon rather than later, but not at the expense of doing a good job. Both Logos 4 and 5 were released with features missing (I don't know about 6 as I don't have it). I think especially as Christians they should be concerned about charging full price for software that isn't fully developed. 

As if that wasn't confusing enough they are now trying to develop a cloud, subscription based application called Logos Now. _It is nowhere near ready for general release_ as evidenced by their changing explanation of what's included and what's not. They've said that it's a platform to help develop features for the next release as well as it's supposed to be a cloud based version of the current software They've explicitly said that features will come and go in Logos Now and if you buy Logos 7 when it comes out you will have to buy Logos 7 to get those features -- the same features that you've been paying for!. Even still they charge $9/mo for Logos Now.


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## Ask Mr. Religion (Nov 8, 2015)

puritanpilgrim said:


> Logos is great. I would recommend it. I have the Reformed Platinum. But, I would only buy Logos with the academic discount. If you can get that it's 50% off. You need to be enrolled at a Seminary to get the discount.


Or teaching at one approved by Logos for academic discounts.


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## Ask Mr. Religion (Nov 8, 2015)

Go here to compare the books and features in Logos:

https://www.logos.com/compare/Reformed

See features here:

https://www.logos.com/features

I have the Diamond version, that took me a couple of years to build up and pay for monthly. I think once you get to the Gold level you have most of the features you may want or need.

If you are just looking for electronic book text and bible text, with some limited interlinear and concordance features, free tools as cited above or WordSearch will do. For that matter, if you are keen on the KJB translation, SwordSearcher is probably all you need and there are plenty of Reformed works that can be added to it that have been compiled by others or included therein with the deluxe version ($60). I think SwordSearcher has the fastest and most unique search capability of all the tools I know of today.


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## reaganmarsh (Nov 9, 2015)

This link may be helpful to all you Logos users -- a ton of free books: http://www.stilltruth.com/2015/pbooks/#comment-16

I don't know how to get the link off of the comment section, but just scroll up and you'll see the books.


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## Miss Marple (Nov 9, 2015)

I read this as "Legos," wondered why it was a concern!!


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## ooguyx (Nov 9, 2015)

reaganmarsh said:


> This link may be helpful to all you Logos users -- a ton of free books: http://www.stilltruth.com/2015/pbooks/#comment-16
> 
> I don't know how to get the link off of the comment section, but just scroll up and you'll see the books.


Erase the part of the link from the # foward


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## johnny (Nov 9, 2015)

reaganmarsh said:


> This link may be helpful to all you Logos users -- a ton of free books: http://www.stilltruth.com/2015/pbooks/#comment-16
> 
> I don't know how to get the link off of the comment section, but just scroll up and you'll see the books.



Thanks once again Reagan, for another excellent link.


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## Timmay (Nov 11, 2015)

Logos Now is subscription based access to the product for $90 a year. You only license the software but you own the books. If you get Logos Now you'll have no need for Logos 7, as you'll already have all the features. It's not cloud based, all of the features are installed on your machine. Logos Now is just another way to pay for their product. Please don't spread misinformation. 

They do have a cloud based subscription where you rent books. Definitely cheaper but you don't own anything. 

If you have the academic discount, that's the time to buy the most expensive product you can afford, as the discounts are incredible. There is also a resale program where you can sell some of the books you own that you don't use (not at 100%) to get some of your money back.

The software really is amazing. But like any software you have to keep updating it because OSs are always being updated. 

I have Reformed Diamond but I was able to pay it all off pretty quick bc of my academic discount. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## kodos (Nov 11, 2015)

I have been a Logos user since Logos 3 (for Mac, which was just plain awful - I regretted that purchase). I then got Logos 4 and then Logos 5. Each edition of the product was completely buggy and unfinished when I initially purchased it. It then got better over time to the point where it was more usable. Even on its best days, Logos is very slow and is a resource hog.

So, I waited until Logos 6 was more mature to upgrade to Reformed Diamond. I also waited until I enrolled in Seminary to get the Academic Discount. I very much have been enjoying my Logos experience for the first time immediately after purchasing it. I don't know if Logos 6 was more bullet proof at launch than the other versions, but so far Logos 6 has been far speedier and less buggy than the other editions were when I first bought it.

I am currently running Logos 6 on my Surface Book (Dual Core i7 Skylake with 8GB of RAM). Logos 5 seemed laggier even on my Quad Core i7, so I think they've made improvements under the hood. The indexer seems far quicker, though maybe my SSD is faster in the Surface Book than the SSD was in my old Lenovo.

Just a note - I make sure to not launch Logos 6 to their "homepage", because what inevitably happens is that it ends up being an advertisement for more of their products (these you can filter out), or worse you find out that some broadly evangelical resources that they pull an article out of has the inevitable 2nd Commandment violation and suddenly you have a picture of "Jesus" staring at you when you want to study God's Word. I have mine launch straight to my saved layout to save me the grief.

All that said - Logos is very pricey, especially to get a package that you really want. Most of the resources that I care for are all in the public domain. So why do I use it? _It saves me a lot of time_. And for me, time is a very precious commodity. More precious than money at the moment with a family of six, three demanding clients at work, duties as a ruling elder, and now as a seminarian.

It is easy to cross reference works, it allows me to do Bible Studies effectively, and even a feature as seemingly trivial as being able to see the Scripture proofs by hovering over them in a resource is a tremendous blessing and saves a LOT of time over the time I've used it.


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## ooguyx (Nov 11, 2015)

Timmay said:


> Logos Now is subscription based access to the product for $90 a year. You only license the software but you own the books. If you get Logos Now you'll have no need for Logos 7, as you'll already have all the features. It's not cloud based, all of the features are installed on your machine. Logos Now is just another way to pay for their product. Please don't spread misinformation.
> 
> They do have a cloud based subscription where you rent books. Definitely cheaper but you don't own anything.
> 
> ...



No one is spreading misinformation except Logos -- Logos doesn't have their act together and THEY don't even know what's going on. They don't know what features will make it from Logos Now to Logos 7 or if Logos 7 will have additional features that Logos Now doesn't have, etc. See Bob Pritchett's post here: https://community.logos.com/forums/p/114198/759132.aspx#759132 given Logos' penchant for removing features from one release to offer them again in another release I'm willing to bet you're going to have to buy Logos 7. Additionally, think about this -- why would they want to keep customers on $90 year when they could have you purchase closer to $1k every other year? If they did that they'd be worse at business than they are now. 

But all of this only further proves my point that they have a bad business model. They don't know what they're selling or how to sell it.


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## Reformed Roman (Nov 11, 2015)

You don't have to be at any seminary. I got the academic discount with my regular college email. Just a heads up. No seminary, or even well known college is required.


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