XMind

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Posted by Jon Polish
Jan 30, 2014 at 08:16 PM

Can I get some feedback on XMind 2013 Pro? I have asked for a refund because I am underwhelmed by the feature set. As an aside, I don’t understand why, in order to try the pro features, one has to purchase the product first. Seems a bit backward.

Anyway, the major issues I have are these:

1. Filtering. Extraordinarily limited.
2. Search. Also very limited.
3. Printing selections or exporting selections. As far as I can see, it cannot be done.
4. Gantt chart. Now here is something I really thought was a great idea. However, I find that it is poorly implemented. For example, the entire map is seen in the gantt chart, not just the tasks. This makes it very cluttered and difficult to navigate. This would be alleviated if you could select a topic on the map and have the corresponding entry highlighted in the gantt. But you cannot. I may be mis remembering, but I think this does not work the other way around either (gantt topic highlighted does not take you to the topic in the map.
5. Outline. Complaints are similar to the gantt chart.
6. Inconsistencies with the interface.
7. No reminders?????
8. No import of folder structure.
9. Its voracious use of memory.

I already use TheBrain, Freeplane and Axon. XMind does have strengths especially with its attractive interface, easy hoisting (drilling down), and decent exporting. I also like that, like TheBrain, you can link or add attachments to the map.

Did I throw the baby out with the bath water, because I just don’t get it. Freeplane is, well, free and although its interface could use a bit of work it is far more powerful and has a better feature set. You can even hoist by applying a filter to the selected node and activate its descendants.

So what don’t I get?

Thanks.

Jon

Posted by Franz Grieser
Jan 30, 2014 at 09:10 PM

I find myself using Xmind Pro less and less. Especially because of #9. I used to keep Xmind open all day to be able to add new thoughts to the 3 maps I had opened. But I stopped doing it about half a year ago because Xmind slows down my PC notably.
#1 to 2 and 4 to 8: Yes (I never tried #3).

Posted by Jon Polish
Jan 31, 2014 at 03:27 PM

Thank you for sharing your experiences Franz. I thought I was missing something.

Jon

Posted by jaslar
Feb 2, 2014 at 10:16 PM

I’ve played with using XMind as a presentation tool. It’s a more interesting version of PowerPoint. The ability to “hoist” an image with its own subsets makes for an interesting visual flow.

Posted by Franz Grieser
Feb 2, 2014 at 10:26 PM

jaslar wrote:
I’ve played with using XMind as a presentation tool. It’s a more
>interesting version of PowerPoint. The ability to “hoist” an image with
>its own subsets makes for an interesting visual flow.

That was one of the reasons why I bought the license :-)
I still use it that way, however only once in a while.

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