I just got my hands on a the shinny new version of MindManager 7 and let me tell you you're in for a threat. Lots of people where on the fence when Microsoft came out with the ribbon stating training would be and issue, users are used to a certain interface etc. Well now that it's been around for almost a year counting betas every time I show it to someone they are a bit skeptical but after playing with it for a bit would never go back to the old menu interface. Fast forward to today, Minjet just released their new version of MindManager 7 with a ribbon interface. I've been a user of this great product for a few years now and it's awesome to design things, brainstorm ideas, moving topics around, etc. You have to try it or at least look at a little flash tour here. Because of my understanding of the Office ribbon, understanding the MM ribbon took me a whole 5 min, I looked at the various tabs and could now do the stuff I used to do in V6 much more intuitively. Kudos Minjet for a great product.
Mind maps have been around for quite some time, and are a way to display ideas in a colorful and graphical way. Our mind rarely think in a linear way, we think of things and write them down then we try to match or move ideas around to link them together in a way that makes sense for our target audience, I have yet to find an easier tool to use to design and brainstorm then MindManager. You should try it you mind find it hard to resist... ;-). I've been using Mind Maps for a while myself and we used to draw them on paper like this
MindManager makes it way easier and they now look more like this
Cheers,
ET