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Best PIM for project management?
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Posted by Dr Andus
Apr 27, 2012 at 12:14 PM
tradercclee wrote:
>http://www.mindsystems.com.au/ seems to be back online.
thanks tradercclee, that’s a relief.
Posted by Dr Andus
Apr 27, 2012 at 12:57 PM
BTW, Amode’s price seems to have dropped significantly from the USD200 it had on BitsDuJour a few years ago (http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/mindsystems-amode/). There are still a few people signed up on there for the USD100 deal, when in fact you can get it cheaper from their website directly (AUD80 or AUD50 for academic):
http://www.mindsystems.com.au/products/amode/amode_pricing.php
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Apr 28, 2012 at 02:53 PM
Dr Andus, I’m glad you found the ideal software for you. Your experience lead me to try Amode again. I actually own a license since the Bits du Jour offer. I had purchased it at the time to use in a new project, but in the end reverted to my previous setup. A practical reason was that some of my partners in other organisations already owned and used MindManager.
Amode indeed provides several complementary views and in particular the combination of outline and calendar is quite unique. In order to achieve a similar effect in competing products one must sync with Outlook or Google Calendar.
When Amode was launched, it received accolades from the technical media, I assume thanks to its developers credentials: they are an Australian firm providing training and support for mind mapping and similar business intelligence products. Quite helpfully, the program even includes a separate tutorial with text and videos which I am sure you have seen.
Personally, I was not enthused by the experience and found the positive points rather overstated. For example, the “method neutral” approach of Amode is not as neutral as it sounds; if a mind map is convenient for a user, then not having one is not neutral at all. That said, Mindsystems had clearly put a lot of hard work on researching users’ needs and developing the product.
The major price drop implies that Amode was not as successful as expected (see also the similar ‘competitive upgrade’ offer). So do some other things, e.g. that it is apparently not possible to check for updates from within Amode, as the relevant server seems to be permanently down.
The way I see it, Amode is a very good solution to a problem which is no longer the same as when the developers probably assessed the market: the main issue now, in the business market that Amode addresses, is collaboration and, in particular, tele-collaboration. Around the time that Amode was launched, Mindjet (MindManager’s developer) was launching Connect, allowing users to share and work on their mind maps online. In fact, telecollaboration is nowadays the single most important issue for me and my colleagues when trying out a new information management product.
That said, Amode should be more than enough for most independent knowledge workers and—at this price- affordable. It should also be adequate for office environments, since its ‘solution’ database files can be worked on concurrently in a network.
Dr Andus wrote:
> BTW, Amode?s price seems to have dropped significantly from the USD200 it had on BitsDuJour a few years ago (http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/mindsystems-amode/). There are still a few people signed up on there for the USD100 deal, when in fact you can get it cheaper from their website directly (AUD80 or AUD50 for academic):
http://www.mindsystems.com.au/products/amode/amode_pricing.php
Posted by Dr Andus
Apr 28, 2012 at 04:28 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
> For example, the ?method neutral? approach of Amode is not as neutral as it sounds; if a mind map is convenient for a user, then not having one is not neutral at all.
Thanks for your thoughts, Alexander. To me Amode’s story seems to be a case of mis-marketing (mis-positioning) a product and creating unrealistic expectations. They talk about a complete end-to-end PIM solution and 300 features. However, later in the help file they tell you not to put too much info under a branch or in a single file because it can slows down the performance or can lead to a corruption of the file. So it’s clearly not for holding masses of data like UltraRecall or ConnectedText can.
Although I didn’t see references to mind mapping on the product page itself, it seems they may have created an impression that it can do mind mapping when it fact it can’t. On the other hand it can do concept mapping and flow charts (though I think VUE e.g. is easier and faster to use).
For me Amode hits the spot as a personal project management solution, which I think primarily it is and it probably should have been marketed as such. I’m still very impressed with the integration of the Tree (a hierarchical outline for work breakdown structure), the Gantt chart and the Calendar. It’s just a lot faster to enter data and set up a Gantt than in RationalPlan or Achieve Planner.
Amode told me that the next stage of development would be a cloud integration but that there are no immediate plans. So it is what it is at the moment.
>it is apparently not possible to check for updates from within Amode, as the relevant server seems to be permanently down.
I don’t have this problem. It does check for updates, there is a bar showing it’s checking, then it tells me I have the latest version. However, I can’t find the version number within the software anywhere (there doesn’t seem to be an “About Amode” option anywhere).
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Apr 28, 2012 at 05:33 PM
Dr Andus wrote:
>I don’t have this
>problem. It does check for updates, there is a bar showing it’s checking, then it tells
>me I have the latest version.
Hm, interesting. OK, so the server is working and there’s an issue at this end. Thanks!
>However, I can’t find the version number within the
>software anywhere (there doesn’t seem to be an “About Amode” option anywhere).
It’s under License Management, in the info card that pops up. Took me a while to find that one.