Best PIM for project management?

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Apr 28, 2012 at 02:53 PM

Dr Andus, I’m glad you found the ideal software for you. Your experience lead me to try Amode again. I actually own a license since the Bits du Jour offer. I had purchased it at the time to use in a new project, but in the end reverted to my previous setup. A practical reason was that some of my partners in other organisations already owned and used MindManager.

Amode indeed provides several complementary views and in particular the combination of outline and calendar is quite unique. In order to achieve a similar effect in competing products one must sync with Outlook or Google Calendar.

When Amode was launched, it received accolades from the technical media, I assume thanks to its developers credentials: they are an Australian firm providing training and support for mind mapping and similar business intelligence products. Quite helpfully, the program even includes a separate tutorial with text and videos which I am sure you have seen.

Personally, I was not enthused by the experience and found the positive points rather overstated. For example, the “method neutral” approach of Amode is not as neutral as it sounds; if a mind map is convenient for a user, then not having one is not neutral at all. That said, Mindsystems had clearly put a lot of hard work on researching users’ needs and developing the product.

The major price drop implies that Amode was not as successful as expected (see also the similar ‘competitive upgrade’ offer). So do some other things, e.g. that it is apparently not possible to check for updates from within Amode, as the relevant server seems to be permanently down.

The way I see it, Amode is a very good solution to a problem which is no longer the same as when the developers probably assessed the market: the main issue now, in the business market that Amode addresses, is collaboration and, in particular, tele-collaboration. Around the time that Amode was launched, Mindjet (MindManager’s developer) was launching Connect, allowing users to share and work on their mind maps online. In fact, telecollaboration is nowadays the single most important issue for me and my colleagues when trying out a new information management product.

That said, Amode should be more than enough for most independent knowledge workers and—at this price- affordable. It should also be adequate for office environments, since its ‘solution’ database files can be worked on concurrently in a network.

Dr Andus wrote:
> BTW, Amode?s price seems to have dropped significantly from the USD200 it had on BitsDuJour a few years ago (http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/mindsystems-amode/). There are still a few people signed up on there for the USD100 deal, when in fact you can get it cheaper from their website directly (AUD80 or AUD50 for academic):
http://www.mindsystems.com.au/products/amode/amode_pricing.php