After recently testing XMind Free Mind Mapping Software, I thought that I would be bitterly disappointed with FreeMind. On the contrary, I was pleasantly surprised!

FreeMind may appear a bit antiquated at first, as the Mind Maps created are very ‘wiry’.  It gives you two options, bubbles or fork, for the appearance of your Mind Maps. I found this frustrating at first, as I am a puristic Mind Mapper at heart. I want to create organic, multicoloured branches. FreeMind is simply not the tool to do this.

There are however a number of options available to customise your Mind Map, including clouds, colours, fonts etc. You could easily create a Mind Map that is beautiful, colourful and unique and therefore appealing to ‘both sides of the brain’.

Use of FreeMind is extremely fast. I think it’s because it does not have the overhead of creating all the fancy stuff.

It is great for the management of information if you are not a puristic Mind Mapper, as you can get many words on a branch quite easily. You can therefore manage summary and detail information on the same map quite easily if you want to include paragraphs.

I suggest you try both FreeMind and XMind as they are both free and see which one you like, especially if you are new to computer generated Mind Mapping. Once you are happy with the concept of ‘drawing’ Mind Maps on your computer, you can evaluate the trial versions of the commercial tools and see whether they are worth their price tag.

To get FreeMind, go to the FreeMind Website, http://freemind.sourceforge.net