Official Gadgeteer Hands On Review: MyBible Bible software
by Don Damiani
Last date revised: 12/22/1999

You've heard the saying, "If I were stranded on a desert island and could only have one book, I'd want it to be the Bible". And what about when you travel and have to carry it with you? Bibles are heavy! Well, not any more. Thanks to Laridian Electronic Publishing, you can carry your Bible on your PDA!

The MyBible* software allows you to load your favorite Bible version on your Palm, or Handspring PDA. (A WinCE version is also available, but it is completely different. We may do a review of it in the near future).   It is easy to install and even easier to use. And there are many functions in the software that allow you to easily navigate your favorite Bible. Currently, the only versions available are King James Version(KJV), New American Standard Bible(NASB), New International Version(NIV), and Revised Standard Version(RSV).  More versions are planned for the future, but these are the most widely used translations. 

When you purchase MyBible, you need to purchase the MyBible Program in addition to the Bible version you want. This is a good thing because if you wanted to buy more than one version, you don't have to pay for the program again. (The program is $10, the Bibles range from $19.99 to $29.99). I'll be reviewing the Palm OS version of the KJV Bible installed on my Visor Deluxe.

The first thing that you may want to do is go to the "Preferences" menu, so you can customize your Bible by changing the way the verse indicators are displayed, or you can just hide them for easier reading.  You can also change the font size, put in chapter dividers, and start every new verse with a new line. 

To go to any verse in the Bible, you simply tap the book name in the upper right corner, and a listing of all of the books pops up.  Then you tap the book that the verse is in, and use graffiti to go directly to the chapter and verse.  The graffiti part is a little bit challenging for me because you only have 2 seconds between numbers to get it right. For instance, for me to go to a chapter 25,   I kept telling it to go to chapter 2 then chapter 5 because I am not too swift with graffiti.  But after a while I got the hang of it and it wasn't too bad.  Then while in the chapter, you use a period or a colon followed by the verse number to jump to the verse.  I was never able to write the entire chapter and verse separated by a colon or period correctly, but I could do it in stages. For instance, while in a specific chapter, tap for a period followed by the verse number will take you to the desired verse.


Some Bible versions are available with footnotes. Unfortunately, there is no functionality to add your own footnotes. It would also be nice to be able to at least underline or bold text so that you could see it better while scrolling through the chapters. (Next version perhaps?) But as a study Bible, there are many advantages to using MyBible. If you have more than one Bible translation loaded, you can easily jump between translations to compare how verses are worded. Just use the menu pick for the translation you want to see, and that translation will come up at the same verse that you were previously viewing. (How cool is that?!)

 

One of the most useful features of MyBible is it's "FIND" functionality.  Here's an example...

Make an "f" in graffiti and you go to the FIND screen.  Here you have many search options. You can search by a specific word or phrase, and you can specify the section of the Bible you wish to search in. I was searching for the verse that says, "Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life..."  Write on the Find line, "the truth", and search in the entire Bible, and you get 87 hits.   You can scroll through them and find the verse that way. But you can restrict the search to just the Gospels, and the same search gives you only 14 hits. Or enter on the Find line, "the way, the truth" and you only get one hit.

Regardless of how many hits you get, it's a lot easier than flipping through the pages of a real Bible when you need to find a specific verse. And all you have to do once you find it is tap the screen on  the verse in the Find listing and you instantly jump to that verse in the Bible. To bookmark it, just tap the bookmark icon at the top of the screen. Now all you have to do when you want to go to your favorite verses is scroll through your bookmarks.

Each Bible is approximately 1.5 MB. This may sound like a large file, and it is, but on a 8 MB machine, I still have a lot of room left.  And if you are hard pressed for memory space, MyBible allows you to selectively delete books from you PDA.   In an example from their web site they site that you can install just the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs easily on a 2 MB machine and not take up too much memory.(It's somewhere around 460K.)

Finally, what I like best about MyBible is the fact that on the Palm OS it's so fast and easy to navigate. I don't think that most folks will actively use MyBible to do every day devotional readings, but MyBible is excellent as a study Bible and will be a valued addition to anyone interested in the Bible who needs to look things up in a hurry.

Prices: MyBible Program for Palm OS    $10.00

MyBible Bibles
King James Version $19.99
New American Standard Bible $29.99
New International Version $29.99
Revised Standard Version $19.99

Pros:
Ease of use.
"Find" functionallity.
Can delete book to save memory space.

Con:
Can't add personal footnotes.
Can't underline or bold text.

*(Please note that Laridian Electronic Publishing states on their web site that MyBible is actually the finished version of a product called Scripture for which a beta version was released in the summer of 1999. Scripture owners can "upgrade" to MyBible at a discount.)

Let me know your comments on MyBible and read what others have to say.