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MindManager 8
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Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Nov 12, 2008 at 03:37 PM
Here’s a more detailed review:
http://mindmappingsoftwareblog.com/mindmanager-8-released/
MM’s slowness was one of the reasons I never upgraded to v.7. Now v.8’s features are indeed very interesting but I’ll have to see how it performs. I’m beginning to be spoilt by Linux’s lightning fast speeds and lose my patience with some of these ultramodern Windows apps.
Alexander
Posted by Chris Thompson
Nov 12, 2008 at 05:30 PM
Slightly OT, but if you’re spending a lot of time in Linux, you definitely have to try Emacs org-mode. I’ve been playing around with it for the last five days and it’s extremely impressive. I’ll write a lengthy post about it one of these days, but in brief, as long as you can put up with text representations of outlines, columns, and tables, it’s essentially a superset of Ecco. (It’s cross-platform too, but I doubt most Windows/Mac users have the patience to master Emacs.)
—Chris
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>MM’s
>slowness was one of the reasons I never upgraded to v.7. Now v.8’s features are indeed
>very interesting but I’ll have to see how it performs. I’m beginning to be spoilt by
>Linux’s lightning fast speeds and lose my patience with some of these ultramodern
>Windows apps.
>
>Alexander
>
Posted by Dominik Holenstein
Nov 13, 2008 at 04:16 AM
Chis,
Your concerns regarding the performance of MM are correct for versions 4 and 5. Version 6 was a significant improvement. I don’t have issues with version 7 and I am sure v8 is better again.
The feature set of MM 8 is impressing, indeed. I like the fact that I can send a Mind Map to a user without MM as a Mind Jet Player. What I am missing here is that attached files to the Mind Map are not added to the created Mind Map Player. This should be technically possible because the Mind Map Player file can be a pdf and it is possible to add files to a pdf.
Generally, I believe that MindJet just managed at the very last moment to reply to the web 2.0 versions of Mind Mapping applications. They on the right track now. The only issue they have to approach the mass market is the pricing.
Dominik
Chris Thompson wrote:
>I really like the filtering in MindManager 8. Combined with MM’s automatic/enforced
>layout algorithms (so when you filter it preserves the general shape and
>relationship of nodes that remain, up to the root), it’s a surprisingly interesting
>tool. My only beef is that in general the program is a tad too slow on large maps with
>complicated layouts.
>
>—Chris
Posted by Chris Thompson
Nov 13, 2008 at 05:19 AM
Maybe the Windows version of MM 8 is faster, though they seem to share the same diagramming codebase. MM8 isn’t terribly slow, but it’s not the most fluid program either when making changes, particularly adding nodes deep in an automatically laid out map.
I do agree though that its feature set is becoming impressive. It’s much more than just a “mind map” program at this point. I think the filtering is particularly powerful.
—Chris
Dominik Holenstein wrote:
>Chis,
>
>Your concerns regarding the performance of MM are correct for versions 4 and
>5. Version 6 was a significant improvement. I don’t have issues with version 7 and I am
>sure v8 is better again.
>
>The feature set of MM 8 is impressing, indeed. I like the fact
>that I can send a Mind Map to a user without MM as a Mind Jet Player. What I am missing here
>is that attached files to the Mind Map are not added to the created Mind Map Player. This
>should be technically possible because the Mind Map Player file can be a pdf and it is
>possible to add files to a pdf.
>
>Generally, I believe that MindJet just managed at the
>very last moment to reply to the web 2.0 versions of Mind Mapping applications. They on
>the right track now. The only issue they have to approach the mass market is the
>pricing.
>
>Dominik
>
Posted by jerryk
Nov 13, 2008 at 10:20 PM
I’m a long time user of Mindmanager, and after a quick review, I find MM8 disappointing. MM7 was a visual refresh of MM6. MM8 adds potentially valuable functionality, but in my view underperforms.
1. MM Player. Doesn’t export text in the text boxes (at least consistently; might depend on whether any highlighting or images appear intext boxes), or any inking. Regrettably, this makes it a deal killer.
2. Linking to dbs don’t help me much directly.
3. So called improved searching—I can’t see any difference in actual performance. Anyone who installed an ifilter had WDS search of mmaps for a long time. The speed of internal search seems unusable as it has always been.
Temporarily very excited b/c of MM Player export. But ultimately disappointed that MM Player only works mickey mouse maps, that one might as well print to pdf.
As for eating up cycles for no good reason, MM8 seems to eat up a few % points less, but still eats up cycles for no good reason (even when apps are minimized in the background). In other words, instead of 4-10%, MM8 eats 2-8%.