FreeMind is a Java-based, cross-platform solution which is designed to make the process as intuitive as possible via 'child' and 'sibling' links that hopefully build your map into something meaningful. To get started with FreeMind, you'll need to locate and double-click on the 'freemind.jar' file in the 'lib/' folder of the FreeMind folder.

You start off with a 'Child Node' which is your main subject. You can write this title in a huge number of font sizes and styles and then right-click on it to add Child Nodes, which are subjects that relate to it. You then have a huge number of tools and annotations down the left hand side to add color and notes to your mind map. This toolbar is horribly crushed together and cluttered though, making it very difficult to see them clearly.

The basic adding and removal of items on FreeMind is extremely easy but the interface does suffer from a lack of organization and clarity. The above mentioned toolbar is way too crowded with many annotations that are not particular useful (such as penguins) and overall, the program does feel a bit flimsy.

FreeMind is, however, very quick and free to use - which is more than can be said for many similar Mind Mapping programs.

Download FreeMind 0.9.0.2 RC4 in Softonic

With Desktop-Reminder you won’t forget about any important to-dos again. This handy reminder lets you create separate entries for each task, with its own deadline, priority level and description, and store them all in a list.

Tasks in Desktop-Reminder can be scheduled to occur only once or be repeated across a certain period of time. The program has also support for desktop notifications, thus making sure you don’t leave important tasks unattended.

Though not as fully featured as other task managers we’ve tried, Desktop-Reminder is still an excellent work companion that will surely help you be more productive. Also, its simplicity of use makes it even more suitable for not so tech-savvy users.

Stay on top of all your pending tasks and to-dos with Desktop-Reminder.

Download Desktop-Reminder 2.54 in Softonic

If you are looking for a complete tool for diagrams, flowcharts, graphs and mapping, we'd definitely recommend Edraw Max. It will allow you to organize your thoughts - or plans - in graphic form, making it easier and simpler to put them into action.

The sheer breadth of Edraw Max's functions means that it is relatively easy to get lost. The interface is attractive and simple to use - it uses the popular ribbon layout, which means that most users will be able to find their way around intuitively. There's a large selection of Help options, and the start-up screen displays all the templates available, making it easy to start any process.

Once you have picked the best mind map template for your needs with Edraw Max, you create the chart by dragging elements from the Libraries on the left into the main interface. You can then rename, modify and move each element until it accurately represents the idea in your head. Edraw Max elements are varied, ranging from simple geometric shapes to universally recognizable symbols and even floor plans and fashion design elements.

Naturally, since mind mapping software is especially suitable for multi-level projects, Edraw Max has bunches of export/import options, while there are also plenty of tools for sharing, such importing documents or adding hyperlinks. Edraw Max is an excellent mind mapping tool, and makes any complex task or project a much more efficient (and even enjoyable) process.

Edraw Max is so complete, it's a bit overwhelming, but persevere and you'll reap the benefits.

Download Edraw Max 6.8 in Softonic

The EDraw Mindmap interface is attractive and simple to use - it uses the popular ribbon layout, which means that most users will be able to find their way around intuitively. There's a large selection of Help options, and the start-up screen displays all the templates available, making it easy to start any process.

Once you have picked the best mind map template for your needs, you create the chart by dragging elements from the EDraw Mindmap Libraries on the left into the main interface. You can then rename, modify and move each element until it accurately represents the idea in your head. EDraw Mindmap elements are varied, ranging from simple geometric shapes to universally recognizable symbols and even floor plans and fashion design elements.

Naturally, since mind map software is especially suitable for multi-level projects, EDraw Mindmap has bunches of export/import options. Unfortunately, that's where the integration ends, and there doesn't seem to be options for other sharing features, such importing documents or adding hyperlinks. This means that although EDraw Mindmap is an excellent mind mapping tool, it is probably best suited to personal, individual use.

EDraw Mindmap, a great tool for visually representing even the most complicated ideas.

Download EDraw Mindmap 6.8 in Softonic

With Stickies you can replace the traditional sticky yellow notes with more ecological, efficient digital notes that are 'pinned' to your desktop. Stickies notes are much more than small text fragments: you can customize their appearance with new background colors and text fonts, attach a file to them, add an alarm to them and more.

Stickies runs in the background but is very lightweight on system resources. The program puts an icon in the system tray, from which you can access its main functions. Other interesting extra functions are the ability to share notes by email or in a local network, as well as the backup option that makes sure you'll never lose an important note.

Stickies is a handy little program that will remind you of anything – and help you save a few trees!

Download Stickies 7.1 b in Softonic

esyPlanner is a complete, free personal information manager that helps you handle tasks, keep a calendar, track personal expenses and even write a personal diary, all from one single interface. You can easily change from one section to another using esyPlanner's left panel, and see the content of the currently selected section in the main interface area.

Besides the usual PIM functionality, esyPlanner also features a special Warnings panel to keep track of all your upcoming events and tasks. Additionally, it lets you search for specific annotations and can also print reports with scheduled events.

esyPlanner has a lot of customization options. Some of these include categories to organize notes and tasks, color codes, privacy settings and different priority values. In fact, there are so many little details to take into account that sometimes it feels a bit overwhelming.

Generally speaking though, it's a handy information manager for those who want to improve productivity via a more organized workflow.

If you're stuck under a pile of pending tasks and meetings, esyPlanner can help you out with a more organized agenda.

Download esyPlanner 2.4.10.1027 in Softonic

The first thing that catches your attention in Wunderlist is its simple, minimalistic interface – very much like the interfaces you find in iPhone apps. This design, along with the program’s support for keyboard shortcuts and drag and drop, makes Wunderlist a pleasure to use.

Wunderlist lets you create as many tasks as you need, arrange them in custom lists, assign a date to each of them and mark the important ones with a star. The only requisite is that these tasks must be really specific, as there’s not much room for text.

But the best thing about Wunderlist is that you can easily sync all your tasks across multiple computers, provided you create a free user account on the Wunderlist website. Syncing will also work with smartphones, as soon as the Wunderlist developers launch an app.

Wunderlist is a stylish task management app with support for cross-platform syncing.

Download Wunderlist Wunderlist in Softonic

Download Stickies 3.0.7 in Softonic

Shock Stickers is probably one of the best options available in virtual sticky notes. After installing it, the program sits unobtrusively on the system tray and allows you to access all its main functions via its icon.

Shock Stickers has an impressive array of features: a dozen colors for notes, support for transparency, ability to lock notes, hide them or send them by email, full text formatting, alarm for notes, password protection and even a recycle manager to recover deleted notes.

It's hard to think of any cons about Shock Stickers. I didn't like being asked for confirmation every time I wanted to delete a note, but then I realized I could turn that off in Settings.

Download Shock Sticker 2.93 in Softonic

What is Inspiration?

Graphic diagram editors are often quite complicated to use, mainly because they include so many tools and customizing options that you can't help feeling lost. Luckily enough, Inspiration goes beyond these first difficult steps and offers users an easy-to-use, yet very complete diagram tool.

Inspiration is an app that can be used by a wide variety of people. We can see it being of use to students, who might make diagrams as a study aid, professionals, who might use it to plan out new structures or business plans, and even everyday people who simply want to transfer an idea to a solid plan in a more ordered, practical way.

How does it work?

Using Inspiration is very easy. Start with your main concept and drill down from there. The great thing about this app is that you can add images, music, text and more to really make the diagrams complete, and, of course, they are completely modifiable, in case you find that your plans change, or work better in a different order.

The Inspiration interface is very easy to use, and a few moments playing around with it should let you get the gist very quickly. Even so, Inspiration offers a huge variety of templates, help documents and even videos designed to let you get the most out of it, while the floating Symbols bar makes the job even faster.

The only downsides to Inspiration is that, despite support for simultaneous documents, there's no handy way to move between them. Maybe a tab bar would fix this. Secondly, it's not the slickest application on the block - even on Windows 7, Inspiration looks like something from the last decade. While that has little impact on functionality, it will put some users off.

Inspiration is a highly usable and handy idea-mapping application that everyone can use. It's just a pity it's not a little more modern.

Download Inspiration 9.0.3 in Softonic

If you're always losing your personal organizer then Noto Personal Organizer is a mini application or ‘window gadget’ that you can move around your computer desktop.

Noto Personal Organizer works exactly like a real personal organizer, with page turning and separate side tabbed sections. This includes a week to view, month to view and projects section. Of course, you've also got an address book and you can set alarms to be triggered when an important event has come up. In addition Noto Personal Organizer gives you a host of other tools including a calculator, mp3 player and a memory game.

The problem is the features should have stopped there. Noto Personal Organizer insists on bloating itself with icons, gadgets, design options and maps that you'll never really use. In fact, there's more emphasis on making your organizer look good than adding any other truly useful features to it - like the ability to integrate with Google Calendar, for example.

Noto Personal Organizer certainly looks good but its functionality could have been extended by adding more substance to its outward style.

Download Noto Personal Organizer 1.40 in Softonic

Efficient Sticky Notes is well presented, although it maybe over complex for a reminder program. However, it has an excellent search tool, for you to find your old notes, and is highly configurable. The main exception is when you publish a note it always appears in the same place, and you can't define this position. Otherwise, you can define the font, color and transparency of your note, and change size.

One note of caution - it's important to change the settings of Efficient Sticky Notes so it minimizes to the system tray when you click close, otherwise your reminders all disappear when the program window is closed! Efficient Sticky Notes can also be set to open on start up, so your notes will be there from the moment windows opens.

If all you need is a sticky note simulation, Efficient Sticky Notes will do the job perfectly, but it's worth mentioning there are more advanced ways to take notes available (like CintaNotes) which are much better integrated into the windows working environment. Efficient Sticky Notes is functional, but it would be much better if notes could be made a little more automatically.

Efficient Sticky Notes may not be an advanced way to organize your thoughts, but if sticky notes are your thing, it does the job admirably.

Download Efficient Sticky Notes 1.67.96 in Softonic

ToDoList can be a great help to organize your work and become more productive. This tool enables you to create highly-detailed lists of tasks and includes all the tools and functions you need to manage your time and pending work more effectively.

One of the features of ToDoList that caught my attention was that you can select to install it as a desktop app or use it as a standalone program, saving preferences to an INI file. Also, the program has a very informative interface with clearly separated areas to display the task list, the contents of the selected task and its main characteristics, respectively.

Tasks in ToDoList are organized in a tree-like structure with support for subtasks, and can be assigned a due date and a reminder. You can also export them to several formats. On the downside, the program doesn't have support for recurring tasks.

With ToDoList you can easily improve your productivity by handling tasks in a more organized and effective way.

Download ToDoList 6.5.10 in Softonic

You can create as many to-do lists as you need in Task List Guru, and add all the tasks you want to each one. The program also lets you back up, print or export the list (to HTML or CSV), and move it to a USB memory drive as well.

Each task you create in Task List Guru has a priority and type – two features to which you can add your own options – as well as a title and a description. Tasks can also be assigned a due date and customizable reminders to make sure you meet all your deadlines.

Task List Guru has a clean, friendly interface and includes also a quick start guide that walks you through the main features of the program the first time you run it – which is always a good idea for newcomers.

Task List Guru is a simple yet powerful to-do list app with lots of interesting features and a clean interface.

Download Task List Guru 2.251 in Softonic