I decided it was time to overcome my mental block against "mind mapping" applications. I might buy a conventional one to experiment. I have looked at inspiration, FreeMind, MindManager, MindGenius, MandMapper, and Visual Mind. It looks like for basic use, the last four are indistinguishable, except on subjective grounds, which actually seem unusually important in this genre. On subjective grounds I prefer Visual Mind. It seems least bloated, with the cleanest interface and for me the nicest look and the best name.

(In fact ALL three of the others approach the intolerability of "Miss Lonely Notes" - which I bought but ended up not liking. Whether merely a self-fulfilling prophecy or something more interesting, I find that how much I like the name doesn't do a bad job of predicting what I end up thinking of the product--an effect that if truly reliable, could conserve huge amount of time.)

As to FreeMind, I can't tolerate the gui.

If there are some telling defects in Visual Mind I should know about, I'd appreciate the information.

Alex has spoken of "mind mapping" as largely a collaborative environment, and that's clearly the direction MindManager has gone, speaking of its team "business mapping" as a collaborative _evolution_ of mind mapping, whereas in the past these products had touted their Buzan orthodoxy. Although there may be subtle effects of mode of presentation, in general the difference between mindmapping and outlining tends to be way overstated.

In the end it seems to me to be mostly a matter of formatting an outline to make maximally efficient use of a page. If short headings are informative in a context, you can cram the most into a page with a diagram, to be taken in with the speed of saccadic eye movements because it is all there before your eyes. If you need long topics, the efficiency advantage _more_ than reverses in an outline.

It seems to me that if a problem involved the inter-relation of a concepts--more numerous than you can chunk into short term memory--then a mind map might be a pleasnt environment to stare at.

Stephen R. Diamond

Stephen,

I would be interested in knowing why you feel a "proper" mind mapping program will be better for mind mapping than Inspiration. True you can also create concept maps in Inspiration, but you don't have to use it that way. Apart from a specific purpose of brainstroming in meetings where the operation of Mind Genuius is rather faster and slicker, I rather like the clean interface of Inspiration for Mind maps.

Graham

[Stephen D.: Although there may be subtle effects of mode of presentation, in general the difference between mindmapping and outlining tends to be way overstated. In the end it seems to me to be mostly a matter of formatting an outline to make maximally efficient use of a page.]

It's interesting when you put it that way; I don't think I recall any of the outliners I've ever tried being able to _actually_print_the_outline_ (as opposed to item contents) whereas all mind mapping applications, including FreeMind, can print mind maps WYSIWYG-ally.

alx

On http://www.mapyourmind.com/freesoftware.htm there are links to three freeware mind mapping programs for the Psion, Palm and Windows systems. The Windows program is FreeMind, not surprisingly.

I don't have Palm, but I used to have Psion and the Mindmap program mentioned was absolutely brilliant.

alx