I have has the last few versions of Mind Manager from Mindjet. I currently have Mind Manager Pro 6. When MM Pro 7 was released I did not upgrade for the first time in a few years, mainly because there did not appear to be much in the way of added or improved features. Instead it looked like the upgrade was mostly dedicated to Vista compatibility and revising the UI to the MS Office "Ribbon" style - as I understand it all Microsoft Logo Certified developers were required to do that in order to maintain their certification. (Though I am not sure that's entirely true).
Two weeks before Christmas I received another upgrade offer from Mindjet - upgrade to Mind Manager Pro 7 for $129.00, which is $45 off the regular upgrade price. At first I summarily dismissed the offer for the same reasons I did so when it was released in September - I don't use Vista nor Office 2007 (I use XP Pro and Office 2003) and I am not aware of any particular killer features added to this version. I never installed the trial of MM Pro 7 because I had read of other users having difficulty getting MM Pro 6 to reinstall after removing the trial version. So I am basing my opinion on other users' input on their forum and elsewhere.
However before I go ahead and ignore the offer altogether - it is good through 12/31/2007 and the next version shouldn't be available until next fall - I thought I would ask here at Donation Coder to see if anyone is using MM Pro 7 and, if so, to ask how you like it. Is it worth the cost of upgrading? Is the Ribbon interface very intrusive? (Looks like it takes up about 15 to 20% more space which is now map space) Is your opinion that I should just pass on this one and look to the next version? I respect the opinions of my fellow users here more than any others I would find on the web.
I use Mind Manager for purely personal reasons, and I use it somewhat sparingly. It is definitely not an "everyday, must be open on my desktop" program for me!
Thanks for any input!
Jim
