Newer version of MaxThink

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Posted by Cassius
Aug 30, 2008 at 01:10 PM

Go to http://www.maxthink.org/indexflash.htm.

Posted by MsJulie
Aug 30, 2008 at 05:54 PM

Can you believe it??? What a blast from the DOS past!!! I did several years of work almost exclusively in the program.

MaxThink was the program that taught me that you could never save often enough. I chuckled in the demonstration where it is now very prominent how many seconds have passed since your last save. I remember it as being very predictably unstable. It got even more unstable under Windows, because Neil Larson never rewrote the program. I moved on and he didn’t.

He claims that it works under Vista, but it has the look and feel of something that would have worked under Windows 98. Even as reasonable as the price is, I would want to see some proof before I invested in that pudding.

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Aug 30, 2008 at 07:25 PM

Actually, I’ve found the Windows version stable enough; as far as I remember it has never crashed on me (I’m using Windows XP) though I admit that I don’t use it that much. For most of what it’s good at, I rely on another program whose roots date to DOS times, namely Brainstorm.

I do remember reading—though I don’t recall where—that N.Larson ported the program properly to Windows and that it actually took a substantial effort and time to do it. I’ve read similar accounts from Zoot’s ‘Admiral’ Tom Davis (on moving from 16- to 32-bit Windows) and Brainstorm’s David Tebbutt, who actually partnered with a new programmer for the Windows version.

However, in these days that Microsoft.NET and the like seem to make software development much easier, but also leading to programs feeling almost identical, I find that the remnants from another epoch mentioned above still offer some unique tools, practices and perspectives in dealing with information.

Within this context, here’s an interesting discussion on Maxthink from some time ago, in case you’ve missed it:
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/566/0/defense-of-maxthink

Alexander

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 31, 2008 at 11:42 AM

Neil Larson includes some interesting tutorials on how to outline properly with MaxThink. It is worth trialing the software just to read these tutorials.

Steve

Posted by Derek Cornish
Sep 2, 2008 at 04:34 AM

Cassius wrote:
>Go to http://www.maxthink.org/indexflash.htm.

Thanks, Cassius. That was very helpful.

Derek

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