Comments on: Mindjet takes visual mapping and collaboration to the next level with slick Catalyst platform

By: Carb

Carb — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 12:51:31 +0000

I belive Mindjet is confussed and lost in some manner with catalyst. The collaboration is great but it should be just a plus. Catalyst and collaboration are much better covered by many other big vendors at much better pricing levels: Webex, Cisco, Adobe, Microsoft, etc. Mind Mapping or Visual Thinking applications are just in the beginning phases. New Management at Mindjet does not really understand the market and the possibilities. Real time collaboration is a plus, not the main income generator as Mindjet thinks will be. Mindjet needs to think in maps using is own product to develop really creative and deep thinking. Catalyst is in my opinion interesting but not a real option for businesses specially very expensive just to try. Will a company spend thousands of US$ to move its projects to catalyst? Not many as sales figures are showing.

By: New contest: The most improved mind mapping software of 2009 - Mind Mapping Software Blog

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:37:53 +0000

[...] Several years ago, MindManager developer Mindjet introduced its first attempt at creating a collaborative workspace for visual mappers. Called Mindjet Connect, it wasn’t very well integrated into the MindManager program, and as a result only enjoyed limited use by the MindManager user community. In early October, Mindjet released Catalyst, a completely new collaboration tool that integrates an all-new set of secure online workspaces with web conferencing, real-time co-editing of maps in Mindjet’s web-based mind mapping application, and a set of highly flexible map sharing tools to take small-team collaboration and map sharing to a whole new level. You can now easily use Catalyst to share your maps via e-mail, Twitter, Linkedin, Blogger, Typepad, Facebook, Wordpress, Y! Bookmarks and over 150 other web-based tools and services. Click here to read my review of Catalyst. [...]

By: Bernardo

Bernardo — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:40:17 +0000

My MindManager trial expires in 3 days. I have been using MindManager daily for 27 days now. I love it. And I haven’t started playing with Outlook integration yet!

But I am not buying it. It is bloated. It is slow. My hard drive is constantly active when it is running, and the CPU usage stays around 15% when it is idle. Completely idle. I wonder why – I am not touching the mouse, or the keyboard, I am staring at the screen for 15 minutes in disbelief and there he is, MindManager doing GOD KNOWS WHAT.

Great software. Very poorly built. I really really wanted to buy it. But I’m downloading XMind. Mindjet, please get in touch when you fix this, because from what I read on the web, this has been an issue since 2006!

By: Michael Deutch

Michael Deutch — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:56:17 +0000

JimB, we’re working on ways to leverage our development across platforms so incremental (and exponential) improvements will be seen across the Mindjet family of products. We’re in the middle of it and we’ll be much more efficient and effective when we launch and improve upon these initiatives…

Wallace, thanks so much for the kind words! It was a pleasure speaking with you and learning from your own deep experience in this emerging field!

By: Wallace Tait

Wallace Tait — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 03:47:40 +0000

After having a very enlightening telephone conversation with Michael Deutch, I certainly feel more confident and assured of further innovation and ground breaking developments from Mindjet. I felt Michael’s passion for the product, and he inspired me; by his knowledge of the information economy and the place that Mindjet MindManager deserves as a leading innovator within the Visual mapping arena.
If you use MindManager; you’ll certainly be cheering for Mindjet. I certainly support the product as a consultant, and with over 1.5 million users, it’s very clear Mindjet remain to lead the continuous software and cloud evolution of Visual to Knowledge management.
Catalyst shall, given the chance, further develop into a standard collaborative virtual office and data bank for the forward thinking information manager of this century.
I’m certainly going to keep an eye on the further development of Mindjet Catalyst.

By: JimB

JimB — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:57:11 +0000

Thanks Chuck et al for excellent comments. I echo my enthusiasm for MindJet the company and the products. I was a loyal customer from the initial product up to a version or so ago. I certainly share Steve Sisk’s frustrations with the core performance of the product, but that is not why I stopped investing in it…

I switched to a Mac. The product on that platform has limped along well behind the Windows version. Michael is it fair to assume that with the architectural changes would come a cross platform core product that would allow desktop users on Windows, Mac OS, or Linux to enjoy the fruits of incremental and fundamental advancements in the product? It would not take much for MindJet to dominate the MAC market as well as the PC market. There are good products, but I believe Mindjet could stand up well to any of them.

Here’s hoping…

By: Wallace Tait

Wallace Tait — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:37:33 +0000

Interesting José,
Would be interested in connecting with you.
Mail me at visualmapper @ gmail. com (just remove the spaces)

By: José M. Guerrero

José M. Guerrero — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 12:12:13 +0000

Working directly on MindManager maps seems to be a problem when you have many nodes or have special requirements.

Instead of waiting for improvements on MindManager, I am developing a system that reads the information from a mind map, stores it in a data base and processes the map directly from the data base.

I think this is a very interesting option. You stop having speed problems and have no limits to what can you do with your mind maps. Searches are a lot faster and mind maps are represented as trees. When you finish working with the map you create a MindManager map again with the new information.

I have developed applications of mind maps to Insurance and Banking and results are very satisfactory.

Anyone interested please contact me.

By: Wallace Tait

Wallace Tait — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:26:16 +0000

Hi Stefan the rude German

I think it’s great that Chuck is open minded enough to let his fellow Visual mappers vent in such manner. We all have the right to express our angst, frustrations and opinions……it’s all good.

This equates into feedback for Mindjet, and while I recall the time almost 5 years ago now, that I proposed a MindGenius “Map Explorer” clone for Mind Manager. I believe (the last time I checked) the forum request I started had over 100k hits and quite a few vociferous additions to the forum.

Nothing was done at all, but I collaborated with Michael Scherotter when he was with Mindjet, and he actually developed a draft of a Map Explorer. The unfortunate issue was; it just had to be yet another add-in

Recently I noted a third party developer created an explorer for MindManager, and it’s a good job. It does seem to me though, Mindjet certainly encourage third party add-in development; I just have to wonder when this bubble is going to burst.

The question must be asked though; is MindManager a capable standalone product, without any add-ins applied? IMO yes, it is indeed an excellent standalone Visual mapping product.

Mindjet may note though products such as MindMapper, MindView and the excellent open source Xmind have turnkey functions such as Gantt, timeline and scheduling functions as integral to the source code of the product.

I recently had an interesting conversation with a client, with whom I was encouraging to adopt MindManager, due to my needs assessment measure of their company information system. They chose one of the aforementioned turnkey products.

As surprised as I was; as a consultant I don’t sell software but, I was indeed surprised and interested to see this corporate user choose a product that does not encourage third party add-ins.

I pressed further, and they asked if a light version of MindManager was available; why I asked? We just won’t ever use the full functions of this excellent product.

So, maybe that’s what is required by a segment of potential users, a light version that gets the job done with minimal footprint on their system and thought processes. The desktop isn’t dead yet.

Just my thoughts

By: stevepane

stevepane — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:11:29 +0000

Hi, this is Stefan the rude German…
Steve: your points are very, very true. I am complaining about this as well in the yahoo forum since quite a while…
Michael: It’s always the same phrases and answers – but no change in the product or in Mindjet’s behaviour – I experience this for quite a while now and I was directly in contact with Mindjets Advocat’s, President’s and Customer’s whatever – hopeless. The old bugs and limitations are there for years and new issues show up instead of resolving the old ones. It’s like telling my little son in July that Christmas is very, very near.
I am using MM since 10 years now but it’s getting worse with every new version.

I am frustrated and I am heavily looking for alternatives. There are only a few because of the MM Add-Ins I am using. Which is strange situation if you think about it.

Let’s see what christmas brings….