Xmind vs FreeMind

Mind mapping is a great way to organize my thoughts and I found FreeMind does a great job in doing that.  However, recently I came across Xmind.  I used the free version and found that it provides some features that were missing from FreeMind.

The following are the missing features:

Floating Topics/Floating Central Topic


This allows you to create multiple central centers.  As shown below:

Different Structures


Xmind allows you to shape your mind map into different structures (in addition to the standard map available in Freemind) such as:

• Fishbone.
• Spreadsheet
• Org Chart
• Logic Chart

This is great except, the nodes below will inherit the structure of the node below.  So I was not able to mix the different structures.

Different Shapes

It is nice to be able to change the different shapes of the nodes.   In additional to the standard Elipse, you can have:

• Rounded Rectangle
• Rectangle
• Diamond
• Call out
• Fish head
• Underline

Here are some examples:

Workbook

In Freemind, you can only have one worksheet while in Xmind, you are able to save multiple worksheet as a workbook.

This is useful if you want to separate multiple ideas in a file.

Outline View

There is an outline view that will allow you to view which nodes are at the same level.  

Negatives

There are a few complaints that I have of Xmind.  They are:

• Due to the additional features, the installer is substantially bigger.  Freemind is 7 Mbyte, Xmind is 50 Mbyte.
• It is also compared to Freemind.