Anyone else hear of this: the Puritan Hard Drive (PHD) by Still Waters Revival Books? I was just skimming through it, and it looks pretty amazing. I do have to admit, though, I cannot stand reading from a screen for more than a few minutes at a time – and of course I love holding a book and writing in it for later studies.
Anyway, this does look awesome for those of you who do read off screens or for those of you who are missionaries or teachers that could use this type of thing.
Comments?
shane lems
sunnyside wa
The Reformed Reader Blog 
I haven’t had a chance to play with one yet… but the early reviews on it sound promising!
http://www.puritandownloads.com/swrb/categories/PURITAN-HARD-DRIVE-REVIEWS/
I think I need one!!
– Dan
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Thanks for that update, Dan – it does sound promising! Feel free to comment here and give some feed back if you do get one someday.
Blessings,
shane
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I was swayed to buy one last week by their $497 offer for a Windows only version. 4 days after my phone order, the drive arrived – today.
It is an amazing collection of books, audio, and video – although some of the books are not easy to read, the quality of the original being a limitation. The searchable books are gems, as one can find what he is looking for very easy.
The search feature of the application takes some getting used to, and I am figuring it out.
I still prefer paper but cannot imagine the treasure of Truth on this drive for $500. That’s 25 hard back books at retail.
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Manfred: Thanks for the quick review.
shane
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My pleasure, shane. I am looking forward to years of study and prayer that the Lord continue to transform me. May it not be a mere pursuit of knowledge, but of knowledge added to virtue which was added to faith.
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As noted above, we (Still Waters Revival Books) are publishing comments and reviews on the Puritan Hard Drive at http://www.PuritanDownloads.com/swrb-puritan-hard-drive.html
Below is a selection of sample comments we have already received from Puritan Hard Drive users:
“I am blown away by it!”
“I was totally amazed at what it is able to do.”
“You will be floored by this product. Amazing!”
“Best Reference Tool Ever!”
“I love my Puritan Hare Drive!”
“What a gift to Christ’s church!”
“Having all of these resources in one place is genius.”
“It is a tremendous blessing of God.”
“The search tools are, by themselves, well worth the price of the Puritan Hard Drive.”
“Bravo!”
“A wonderful and powerful tool.”
“Wow! The Puritan Hard Drive is fantastic!”
“By God’s Grace I think you have knocked the ball out of the park with this product.”
“… this tremendous program.”
“A huge time-saver for my own learning, preaching, teaching and counseling.”
“The speed itself is amazing!”
“For ease and speed of search, the Puritan Hard Drive is frankly ingenious.”
“A tremendous asset to my library.”
“In one resource, the vast wealth of God working through His chosen elect for hundreds of years.”
“The Puritan Hard Drive (by God’s grace – ed.) will instill the truth of the sovereignty, immutability, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience of our God…”
“I received your wonderful hard drive. Praise the Lord.”
“Provides a well-rounded approach to my own theology.”
“For spiritual richness and depth of insight, who can match the Reformation and Post-Reformation Puritan classics?”
“I find the ability to copy from any of the (searchable – ed.) PDFs and paste into whatever .doc I happen to have open to be extremely useful.”
“A record of the true Church of God rising from the ashes of the Church burned to nothing by the late 1400’s…”
“Thank you ever so much for doing this.”
“Thank you and congratulations on a great product.”
“Thanks again for this remarkable work!”
“The Puritan Hard Drive is the beginning of something special I believe.”
To learn more about the Puritan Hard Drive all are welcome to visit our (SWRB) Web page at http://www.PuritanDownloads.com/swrb-puritan-hard-drive.html
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My apologies! The URL in the text above, for reviews of the Puritan Hard Drive, should have been http://www.puritandownloads.com/swrb/categories/PURITAN-HARD-DRIVE-REVIEWS/
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I have been interested in the contents of this drive for a long time. But there are a number of reasons why I have never taken the bait. (1) A lot of what is on the drive can be now downloaded through different sources such as the one put together at http://www.puritanlibrary.com. (2) There is so much material on there that has very little to do with Puritan. For example, Brian Schwertly critiquing infant communion or Greg Price, Reg Barrows etc.. (3) The sale that will always end the week or the day that you are reading the ad. This ad method has not changed in years and just does not appear to be upright and honest. (4) PDFs that are just pictures of pages of books and not texts one can copy and paste just aren’t that helpful. That is why I am thankful for some of the texts done by Ages Software. And finally, one of the reasons we consult these texts is because it is impossible to get the titles in hard print. But with the print on demand services of such sites as http://www.abebooks.com, it is almost possible to get anything, even such rare books at Thomas Henry’s letters to a Anxious Inquirer – 1833, or Heman Humphrey’s letters to his son on the ministry.
What is going to be more useful in the future, and I have already contacted Ages Software about it, is to convert clean PDFs into Amazon Kindle format.
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Hi Prof Jub, Shane, Manfred…
I took the plunge last week and bought the puritan hard drive when I saw that they brought the price down to under $400. I just couldn’t do it at the $800 price. I also received it in two days, but I live in Maryland and it seems to have shipped from Maryland as well.
At first glance I’ve been rather shocked and amazed at the size and depth of this library! Wow! The software runs well on my system (Windows 7) and takes a little time to get used to (there’s a user guide that comes with it)… but once you get the hang of it, the search tools are pretty slick… powerful and lightning fast!
Prof Jub, you mentioned something about being unable to copy and paste from the text of these documents. One of the reasons that I bought the drive was because I saw in their promo video that this capability is included with the drive… and I have found that to be true with the exception of the oldest documents that are in the old style orthography. I wrote to their tech support and was told that while they were able to run an optical character recognition utility on these documents in order to make them “indexable” (is that a word?) and copyable, they are unable to do the same for docs in the old text fonts. Thus, they tell you that you can copy and paste from “most” of the docs.
One thing that I didn’t know until I received the drive is that they created a “master index” that comprises ALL of the words from all of the documents on the entire drive (those that were able to be indexed). It takes a few extra steps to enable the search of this “master index” in Adobe Acrobat, but once you have that working, you’re now searching for a key word across the whole library rather than just one book!… and I don’t think I’ve seen a research utility (outside of Google!) that produces so many results in context! After you search for a term, you’re given a lengthy list of results, and when you click on it, the resource that contains it is immediately opened and the search term is highlighted on the page! It’s just… SLICK!!
So… I’m still getting the hang of it, but so far I’m really really impressed with this drive/library… looking forward to diving into this library in the coming years!
– Dan
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I wish I’d waited until the price dropped to less than $400! Whoda thunk it would be $150 less in two weeks later?
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New Kindles can read PDF files natively, but the format it not best for reading – changing text size not possible, for instance.
I’ve found a free tool that converts PDF files to HTML and, in one test, it formatted a long book into a very usable format that Kindle can handle nicely. http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/default.asp?Language=EN The Mobipocket Creator – Publisher edition is more flexible. Has uses beyond converting PDFs for e-readers.
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Thanks everyone for the helpful comments and tips and such. Prof.Jub, thanks for that puritan website!
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but a person could possibly buy a Kindle or other e-reader and download/convert many free puritan documents to read on the Kindle (correct?). ProfJub and Manfred, is that sort of what you’re saying? This would save money it seems. I think one can get a refurb Kindle for just over $100, right?
Thanks again,
shane
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shane,
I bought my wife a new Kindle 3G for $139. A refurb for under $100 would be a good deal. The people who sell the Puritan hard drive have lots of stuff for free and tons of stuff for $0.99 each.
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Shane: There is a limit to what PDFs can be converted to kindle format. PDFs that are images of pages cannot be converted. All of the Ages CDs will convert, and any text that you put into a Word Document will convert. I have converted so many texts, however, that I have purchased very little. Just as an example, all of the Chapel Library http://www.mountzion.org tracts are being placed in PDF format and they convert well to kindle format. Any text that you can copy from the web and paste into Word will convert.
There are some good prices on some reformed books but the formatting is not always done well. They took the text from an OCR read of certain books and then made it into a Kindle book. The advantage is that they sell for about 99 cents. For example, you can get the two volumes of Edwards’ works for 99 cents each.
Without the proper formatting, kindle books are hard to navigate. I told my son who is just 13 and has mastered the IPOD that the Kindle really would be ten times more acceptable if it had the touchscreen capabilities of an IPOD. The problem is, it would not have the digital ink format so it would not show well in direct sunlight.
Not all of the Puritan Hard Drive texts are just photocopies of the pages, so they would probably convert.
By the way, books.google.com is the most amazing site I have ever seen on the internet, I have downloaded 2 DVDs full of books, but a not so well known site is http://www.archive.org and it is arranged well. Some of their books are already downloadable into a kindle format.
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The Puritan single spindle drive is now under $300. I don’t want to come across like sour grapes, but dropping the price from $800 to $500 to $350 to $298 in less than a month sure strikes me as funny – and not in a good way.
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Wow. Interesting. Maybe there is a good reason behind this?
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Greetings Manfred!
First, thank you for your order of the Puritan Hard Drive (PHD). We pray the PHD is a tremendous blessing to your soul. Your purchase also helps support the development of world-class Reformed research and study tools like the Puritan Hard Drive, additions and upgrades to the PHD in the future, and also helps us to reach millions of people all around the world with free Puritan and Reformation resources. To see two of the many Web sites we (Still Waters Revival Books) use to spread Reformed truth, free of charge (all around the world), please visit http://www.swrb.com/newslett/newslett.htm and http://www.sermonaudio.com/swrb.
On top of that, regarding your comment above, please call me (ask for Reg) at the phone number listed on our Web site at http://www.puritandownloads.com/swrb/, and we can discuss your situation and I will do my best to make the deal you got even better.
Also, please let me explain the reasons for the recent price fluctuations, as I think there is a little bit of confusion (no offense intended) in the way you listed the pricing above and applied these prices to the Single Platform Edition of the Puritan Hard Drive.
The retail price of the Dual Platform Edition of the Puritan Hard Drive is $4,997.97. The Super Sale price for the Dual Platform Edition of the Puritan Hard Drive (which includes both the Windows and Mac versions and at least a 250GB hard drive) is now $1,997.97. We have been running additional discounts that have (recently) kept this price between $797.97 and $1,597.97 (with free shipping worldwide). Thus, the $800 price you mentioned only applies to the much higher priced Dual Platform Edition (DPE) of the PHD, and not the Single Platform Edition (SPE) — as the SPE has never been offered at the $800 price.
Additionally, based on customer feedback, we recently introduced a new Single Platform Edition (SPE) of the Puritan Hard Drive. We did this because we received so many calls and emails from people who greatly desired to benefit from the Puritan Hard Drive (what right thinking Christian wouldn’t?), but who also told us that it was out of their price range.
We prayed about this and asked the Lord for wisdom on how to handle this situation. As a result of answered prayer we responded to these pleas for help by offering either the Windows or Mac version (but not both) on a much smaller hard drive (with a minimum guarantee of 120GB, but so far shipping on larger hard drives as an unadvertised bonus), in the Single Platform Edition of the PHD, for a considerably lower price.
We did this, we believe, in obedience to the Lord, and to further minister to those in need — who might not otherwise have been able to afford the original Dual Platform Edition of the PHD (which has been priced at $797.97 or higher).
However, we also wanted to keep the Single Platform Edition price as low as possible (which is something we have always tried to do with all our products, for ministry and outreach purposes), so we have been testing different price levels, between $297.97 to $597.97, to try to determine the lowest price at which we can afford to sell the Single Platform Edition of the PHD (i.e., will the quantity of additional sales, at the lower prices, offset our costs enough to justify a lower price?) — so that even more people might benefit from this wonderful new Bible and Reformation study tool the Lord has given us in this generation.
By the way, the retail price of the new Single Platform Edition (Windows or Mac) of the Puritan Hard Drive is $2,997.97, and prices to the end user are also likely to continue to fluctuate, at least somewhat, depending on our hard drive costs, and a number of other factors. This will be done with the intent of keeping the final price as low as possible, so that more people can obtain this amazing tool for spiritual growth and sanctification.
It may also be of interest to you (and others) to know that other technologically advanced companies change their prices daily (on some items), or even more than once a day — including a “little” company by the name of Amazon.com.
Moreover, right near the top of our Web page about the Puritan Hard Drive, at http://www.PuritanDownloads.com/swrb-puritan-hard-drive.html, you will find the following information (which should further demonstrate where our hearts are at, by God’s grace):
“Because ministry is our priority, if you are unable to afford the full discounted price for the Puritan Hard Drive, please contact us with an offer stating what you would be able to pay. The more information you provide as to why you can’t afford even the discounted sale price on the Puritan Hard Drive (even using our interest free deferred payment option), and how much you can afford, the more likely it is that we will be able to work something out so that you can obtain the Puritan Hard Drive. If you are truly in need we will do our best, within reason and bounds of Scriptural propriety, to help you.”
In this same vein you’ll further notice (in the statement above) that we also offer an interest free deferred payment option, which was implemented to assist people who could not pay the full price at one time, to obtain the phenomenal Reformation study tools the Lord has given us through SWRB. This idea, of adding an interest free deferred payment option, also originated through prayer and has been very effective in helping a large number of our brothers and sisters in Christ benefit from our 62 Reformation and Puritan CDs (which were published before the PHD was available) and in helping Christians with limited financial resources to be able to benefit from the Puritan Hard Drive as well. This was all set up to aid brothers and sisters in Christ who lacked the funds to obtain the needed resource outside of this special offer to meet their needs.
What’s more, we even have a whole section on our Web page entitled, “PURITAN HARD DRIVE MINISTRY AND DONATION OFFERS,” at http://www.puritandownloads.com/swrb/categories/PURITAN-HARD-DRIVE-MINISTRY-AND-DONATION-OFFERS/. Below is a summary statement taken directly from that page.
“At SWRB we also have a Puritan Hard Drive missionary and ministry donation program, where for every Puritan Hard Drive donated (i.e. full payment purchase designated for a mission, missionary, pastor, elder, seminary student, poor or persecuted Christian, seminary library or church library), we match your donation with another Puritan Hard Drive which will be donated free of charge (by SWRB) to a mission, missionary, pastor, elder, seminary student, poor or persecuted Christian, seminary library or church library in need.”
Much of what I’ve noted above, regarding pricing, pricing options, our ministry offer to the poor, and which prices apply to which editions (SPE or DPE) of the PHD, is all stated on our Web page, right near the top, at http://www.PuritanDownloads.com/swrb-puritan-hard-drive.html, or in categories in the left column of our Web page under “PURITAN HARD DRIVE MINISTRY AND DONATION OFFERS” (at http://www.puritandownloads.com/swrb/categories/PURITAN-HARD-DRIVE-MINISTRY-AND-DONATION-OFFERS/).
Lord willing, this short note clears up any confusion about which editions (SPE and DPE) of the Puritan Hard Drive are available (and what they contain) and why PHD prices have fluctuated — and has helped explain some of SWRB’s goals and motives in these things, as we seek to serve our Lord Jesus Christ.
May our Lord’s richest blessings rest upon your soul!
Your Servant in Christ (for the Third Reformation),
Dr. Reg Barrow, President, STILL WATERS REVIVAL BOOKS
Serving Christians Worldwide (In Over 100 Countries) For 26+ Years
http://www.puritandownloads.com/
P.S. We also make a free demo version of the Puritan Hard Drive software available, which includes over 300 Reformed books and MP3s, at http://www.puritandownloads.com/swrb/categories/FREE-PURITAN-HARD-DRIVE-SOFTWARE/ — if anyone would like to take the PHD software for a spin at no cost. And please don’t be fooled by the fact that we give this software away as a free download on our site, as it is a great Christian (Puritan and Reformed) study tool in and of itself — as it contains a fully-functional copy of the Puritan Hard Drive KnowledgeBase application software with only some slight limitations (and, of course, about 12,300 fewer Reformed books, MP3s and videos than the Puritan Hard Drive itself).
“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).
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Dear Heschel: Thanks for your review. It was interesting to say the least. I am the Reformed Baptist that you talk about that has my “mp3s” on the puritan hard drive. But these are just audio books. http://reformedpastor.podbean.com/
I was glad to find your blog, I will have to check it out from time to time.
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A note for readers of this (now closed) thread from the management: one commenter had offered up a critique of the Puritan Hard Drive here on this thread which drew a response from the distributor of the product. (If there seems to be some gaps in the discussion, it is because the critiquer has asked for all his comments to be removed.)
To read Reg Barrow’s response to Hershel Lee Harvell’s critique, please see this link: http://www.puritandownloads.com/swrb/pages/A-Critique-of-Hershel-Lee-Harvell%27s-%22Puritan-Hard-Drive-Critique%22-by-Dr.-Reg-Barrow.html
To see Hershel Lee Harvell’s critique, please see this link:
Click to access Puritan%20Drive%20Critique.pdf
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