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Review: Mentat
Mentat is a lightweight task management system based on the growingly-popular Getting Things Done philosophy. BlackBerry software is paired up with a web client to help organize tasks into categories, assign them to particular people, update status, leave comments, and plenty more. It’s a solid step up from the built-in Tasks application primarily by virtue of sharing a daily agenda with others and being able to communicate about those projects. There are some basic things that Tasks has that would be really great to see in Mentat, but it’s still in beta and features are being added on an ongoing basis.
Appearance
Mentat’s layout is probably one of the more striking things about it. The creator’s Mac influence shows in both web and BlackBerry clients. On the browser side of things, pretty much any text is clickable, which let you execute common tasks. For example, when you click the New Task button, it’s replaced by an empty text box where you can type in the name of the task, along with a couple of drop-down menus to further define it. As another example, clicking on a task title lets you rename it. Although intuitive, it takes a bit of time to figure out what does what, since very little is made explicit. Luckily, Brain Murmurs are doing a great job on documentation, providing cleanly-written instructions and quick how-to videos to get you going. The BlackBerry app follows the same simplicity-first design scheme, listing task categories with your daily agenda topping the list.
Integration
Mentat is largely meant to be a stand-alone replace of the BlackBerry’s built-in tasks application, so there isn’t too much talking on that front. It would be nice to see some integration with the calendar (which we’re told is in the works), since that deals with a wider scope. Mentat’s definitely more of a daily task management app. One thing that I’ve been enjoying since using the BBSmart e-mail viewer was the ability to add e-mails as a task right from the menu, which Mentat would do well to add in.
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Posted by Simon Sage in Features, Reviews
Comments [7 Responses]
December 14th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
[...] Cool posted a nice review of Mentat today! Simon Sage, the reviewer suggested a few additions, such as the ability to create [...]
December 14th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Great, now you tell me after forking out the dough for ToDoMatrix. Care to compare the 2 products?
January 9th, 2008 at 1:02 am
I need a really fast desktop app where I can add/process/mark complete my tasks, which I can then sync to my Blackberry. For which I currently use Outlook with BB Exchange Server.
Mentat seems really great, but would not be suited for my needs. What would make me consider it, if it still used the default tasks as the back-end, and made a nice clean GTD-Style user interface to interact with it. That way I can still use Outlook and Bb-exchange server.
Arif
February 22nd, 2008 at 6:51 pm
I tried Mentat for a while but it was so buggy that I gave it the heave-ho!
If they can ever get it to work it might be ok! For now, avoid at all costs!
March 31st, 2008 at 8:45 am
[...] first heard of Jott when checking out Mentat, and was impressed enough that the new BlackBerry client got me pretty excited. Jott for BlackBerry [...]
