Help. I have noticed that my Brainstorm sw, the 2008 3.6 version displayed that it was a evaluation version. I don't know how long it has been doing that, but I have had a license for this programme for a long time. Every attempt to reinstall it on win 7 has failed. Actually, the software installs, but when I enter my user name and registration code it fails to register and still maintains that it is in evaluation.

Can anyone help, or has anyone had a similar experience.

I use this software a lot and it would be a hardship to be without it. ( I don't want to use CT or any other outliner instead of this, so please don't suggest alternatives - I also own licenses for a legion of "outliners" and almost all the mindmapping programmes that are extant. I keep coming back to Brainstorm.
I have tried win 95, win xp sr 2 win xp sr3 compatibility modes, this doesn't change the problem.
Wolfgang

I just checked, and I have the same version.
It registers fine. I'm on Windows 7.

Have you tried emailing brainstormsw.com?

I've been considering buying a Brainstorm licence recently. Would any of the long-term users mind sharing some ideas of what they use it for?

I was thinking of using it for coming up with a final structure (outline) for my PhD and its individual chapters in a top-down manner. I already have other software to develop a detailed bottom-up outline but that is likely to contain more information than I probably need.

I thought using Brainstorm's view could help focus my attention on the large themes, as it shuts out all the clutter. Do you think Brainstorm could be used like that?

I am however a bit concerned about the price and also how it's going to fare in a Win8 etc. environment, considering that it's no longer developed.

Here's how I'd do it:

Take all the stuff *I've* written about my paper. So no copied research. Dump it all into Brainstorm.

Then start sorting, 6 categories per layer, until I had the entire thing outlined.

It's mindless, fast, and the result is an organized paper structure.

In my opinion, there's no better way to create structure.

Wolfgang wrote:

Every attempt to reinstall it on win 7 has
failed. Actually, the software installs, but when I enter my user name and
registration code it fails to register and still maintains that it is in evaluation.

Wolfgang,

I've been using Brainstorm for a couple of years on two separate Windows 7 PCs and I've never had this issue. In fact, I consider Brainstorm's resilience over evolving Windows versions (I believe the latest build was out before Windows Vista were available) a sign of good workmanship, as its speed and low resource consumption which put contemporary programs to shame. That doesn't mean that it's not without problems, but I don't think that the installation issue you're facing is inherent to Brainstorm.

I did face a similar issue once when trying to install Brainstorm under Wine in Linux. I suspect that it has to do with writing rights in the Program Files directory. Are you on Windows 7 64-bit by any chance? They have a "Program Files" directory for 64-bit programs and a separate "Program Files (x86)" for 32-bit ones, such as Brainstorm, and this sometimes causes issues.

My proposed solution is to uninstall Brainstorm completely and re-install it and register it on a USB drive with the portable install option. In fact, I would suggest that you install it on a separate PC (ideally on Windows XP) and then use it from the USB drive. You may then even be able to copy the whole portable directory to your main PC's hard disk (on a non-Program Files directory) and run it from there. You can manually create a shortcut on your desktop to the .exe file to make it more convenient to run.

Hope this helps.


Dr Andus,

Re my uses for Brainstorm, they are too many to count, ranging from text development to mailing list management (its auto identification of duplicates is fantastic for such chores). I would agree with the main idea in JB's message, that Brainstorm excels in making order out of chaos. The size and complexity of information that it can help organise is quite remarkable. However, for what you have in mind, I believe that any outliner supporting hoist, to help keep you focused, should do nicely.

By the way, if my information is correct, and they come from a reliable source, we should not consider Brainstorm abandonware yet. Here's hoping for the best.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

However, for what you have in mind, I believe that any outliner
supporting hoist, to help keep you focused, should do nicely.

Thanks. Actually I did think about this, that it is the same as hoisting in other outliners. However, doing it in Brainstorm somehow seems to have a different psychological effect than using other outliners. With outliners I still can't get away from the feeling that I'm within a hierarchy, while Brainstorm somehow manages to free you from that. I've only just played around with it, so these are initial impressions.

Hi.
Actually, brainstorm SW does run on my Windows 7 pro, but the problem is that when I enter my name and then copy the serial number in the field below and hit OK, these don't remain in the fields but the program remains in trial mode. I am looking at all my old DVDs and data backup external hard disks to see if somehow my serial number is incorrect or incomplete, so far that seems not to be the case. It seems as if the program does not write the registration information to the install directory. It is heartbreaking and horrible because I use brainstorm SW every day.
Concerning the auto hoisting, I have also over the years sometimes wished I could turn it off, but it is still an incredibly useful feature. The other thing that makes brainstorm SW super useful is the ability to throw text to another location-a very efficient way to reorganise documents. The namesakes are also very credibly useful, and although other programs have links and replicates no other program has such quick and automatic way of doing this.
I use this program for storing certain data and numbers though the heavy lifting is really done by ultra recall although of course brainstorm can be run through ultra recall.
Brainstorm SW (along with MS Word) is the best program for wordsmithing--–-which is what single pane outliners are all about. Scrivener et al only allow you to type into a pane, but you cannot take a long paragraph break it up into single sentences rearrange the sentences and reassemble the paragraph. Scholarly scientific writing requires this and that is why brainstorm SW is the best program I found for writing.
I guess I will have to email where those running brainstorm SW now, but an uneasy about doing this.
JBfrom: I'm afraid I cannot make any sense of your suggestion; how will this help me in getting my serial number accepted by the software?

Dear Alexander Deliyannis.
Yes I am running Windows 7 64 bit! And I will try your suggestion. I've tried fiddling with running the program under Windows XP mode in Windows 7 64 bit but that didn't help.
This could be lifesaver.

If there ever were a real update to this programme I would gladly pay the full registration fee again. I have never understood what this programme did not take off in a big way. I suspect that the automatic hoisting was a problem for some, and an option to do the editing an aerial view, as many users have suggested over the years, might have alleviated this concern. At least until the user became more comfortable with the auto hoisting. Another problem might have been the lack of RTF-type formatting although this never bothered me and should not bother a real wordsmith. Finally, the programme looked very much DOS like in some yahoos might have balked at this, although I thought it was charming. There is no substitute for brainstorm, and I hope, I truly do, that the developer will get going again. If only the 2 brilliant English gentleman could come back and save us.

Wolfgang wrote:

The namesakes are also very credibly useful, and although
other programs have links and replicates no other program has such quick and
automatic way of doing this.

...

Scrivener et al only allow you to type into a pane, but you cannot take a long
paragraph break it up into single sentences rearrange the sentences and reassemble
the paragraph.

I cannot agree more with your two points above. I have found nothing comparable. But the dealbreaker for me is the broken support for non-latin characters :-(

JBfrom: I'm
afraid I cannot make any sense of your suggestion; how will this help me in getting my
serial number accepted by the software?

I believe JB's suggestions were aimed at Dr Andus for trying out the software.

Hi.

F-Secure wouldn't let me download and install the current version of Brainstorm. Anyone else tried to DL the software lately?

Franz

I just did, with no problems.

FYI, I use Microsoft Security Essentials which I have found reliable without being trigger-happy.

Thanks Alex.

So, I'll DL the software on another machine (with a different security suite), double-check and then see, if I can define exceptional rules in F-Secure to be able to use Brainstorm on my main machine.

Franz

Dear Alexander Deliyannis
Your suggestion worked and I am now happily using Brainstorm again to write my draft for an NSERC grant, with UR naturally.
Thank you very much.

Great news Wolfgang :-) And all the best for your work!

@Alexander Deliyannis
Thanks for your help and best wishes. I cannot leave your earlier comment to rest in peace. You suggested that Brainstorm may not be abandonware yet. This have given me an insatiable unreasonable totally crazy hope. Is there anything you can divulge? Are there hints? Will it be springtime again??????
By the way Brainstorm even plays nicely with my Dragon naturally speaking 12, which I always use when posting. Dragon dictates directly into Brainstrom without the dictation box popping up; and you can set Brainstorm to do a new edit when enter is pressed so dictation can run on for paragraph after paragraph.
Wolfgang
ps One of the reason I switched to a mac last year was because of the nice outliners available on that platform (I bought them all - or it seems like it). I switched back to PC because Vista was superceeded by win 7 and especially because Dragon nat speak is so much better than the mac dragon dictate (my workhorse). Then I rediscovered Brainstorm and realised it is so much better than even the mac outliners, though I miss some of the polish of omnioutliner.

Hi Wolfgang, how do you use Brainstorm with UR ? I can link a file in UR but can't search it. So I generally save it as an HTML and link that as well in UR so it becomes searchable. I was wondering if there is any way to automate the export (since brainstorm doesn't have any command line options for it) or otherwise make the brn file searchable UR or any better alternative for integrating the two.

sean wrote:

Hi Wolfgang, how do you use Brainstorm with UR ? I can link a file in UR but can't search
it. So I generally save it as an HTML and link that as well in UR so it becomes searchable.
I was wondering if there is any way to automate the export (since brainstorm doesn't
have any command line options for it) or otherwise make the brn file searchable UR or
any better alternative for integrating the two.

Here's another message that got buried today. I'm just replying in case it's more likely to reach its intended recipient (and I'm also curious).

Thanks Dr Andus, your trick seems to work.

Sean, in theory, all you should need to do is to add .brn to the extensions that UltraRecall parses for keywords (indexing). Brainstorm files are ANSI files with some additional binary attributes. You can view a Brainstorm file in a text editor (the text editor will complain about the binary content, which you can ignore) --just don't save it from the editor or it will be corrupted.

I tried the theory outlined above but got nil results. My guess is that UltraRecall doesn't like the binary content or excludes the .brn files from indexing for other reasons. I renamed a .brn file to .txt but again with no luck.