Chuck frey has on his blog “Mind Mapping Software Weblog” published a link to a review of the open source Mind Mapping utility Freemind he has done and posted on his innovation tools website.
To keep the post short I’ll just give you an excerpt from his conclusion : “FreeMind 0.8.0 is an impressive mind mapping program that has improved significantly in just a few years. Despite a few quirky behaviors, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to businesspeople who want to learn what all the excitement surrounding mind mapping software is all about. It’s also well-suited to people with fairly basic visual diagramming needs, or if you simply cannot afford one of the commercially available programs. If you need the ability to integrate your maps with Microsoft Office or other business applications, I wouldn’t recommend FreeMind.”
It’s the same feeling I have after using Mind Jet Mind Manager for a while. I’m using the links to Microsoft Office all the time, and the first thing I missed in freemind was the export to word, and the second thing was the edit in outline view. But I still use freemind at home, and for brainstorming and making maps it’s great !
You can find Chuck’s post here.