Windows Phone Thoughts: Weathering Those Brainstorms on the Go with MindManager Mobile X5 for Pocket PC

The Miss....

My major disappointment lies with the fact that I am limited to working with the outline view. However, this alone wouldn’t be enough to really upset me except for the fact that I cannot view the entire outline; only one topic and its branches at a time. If I want to move a subtopic from one branch to another, I have to perform several actions. The major appeal of MindManager (the desktop version) is its unstructured nature. It seems very contradictory to me to hobble the Pocket PC version to so much unnecessary structure.


Figure 6: This is an example of a generic outline.

Referring to Figure 6 above, if I want to reassign an idea to another topic, it takes several steps, not a clean and simple drag and drop.


Figure 7: I start by dragging an idea...

I start by dragging the idea from its original location to a new category.


Figure 8:...into an new relationship. But I can't control where it goes in the new topic...

After dropping, I have to open the new home category. The idea is at the top of the list. If I want to associate that idea with a topic, I have to drag and drop again.


Figure 9:...until I manually open further levels of the outline.

I open the newly desired topic, and drag and drop the idea to the desired location. While this may not seem like a lot of work, the process becomes cumbersome when trying to move large amounts of items when fleeting new concepts find you. Because of this, I have found MindManager X5 Mobile to be a good resource to view elements of a map I created on the desktop, but not a serious tool for brainstorming on the fly.

Conclusions
MindManager X5 Pro is a powerful program that offers powerful yet freeform tools to capture thoughts and and explore ideas through the creation of mindmaps. The mobile version is good for referring to these MindMaps, but the software is too structured to help with more than basic mindmap creation.