Denrael

I’ve been a fan of Mindjet’s Mindmanager for years. Mindmaps are a great way to lay out options, convey ideas and present information. When I was on Windows, I saw Mindjet begin down the path of increasing prices at a pace that in my mind was far more rapid than the level at which features were being added. Still, in the cost/benefit was worth it.

Once I switched to Macintosh, the world turned over. Mindjet does have a Macintosh version, but it is significantly less enhanced than the Windows release. Their licensing did not give me any options for transferring license from Windows to Macintosh (Adobe on the other hand made that process close to painless).

I finally started looking at alternatives. I’ve only just started, but XMind, the open source alternative looks extremely well designed, and is a beautiful Macintosh experience. If my initial impressions are confirmed, I will be testing the Windows version and quite possibly saying farewell to Mindjet.

To be fair, there are many features in the Windows version of Mindjet that I don’t use. They may be important to someone. But for me, the lack of a good Macintosh version, and more important, the inability to easily transfer license or cross-license was the final key.