Pros
Merlin has everything we need to plan our projects. It is easy to use and good designed. They also have a good online support.
Cons
Only for Mac
Pros
Clean Mac style interface. Great usability. A much better experience than MS Project. This product feels light and agile compared to MS Project. Export to the web and the UI has the same high quality. Also you can go back and forth with MS Project.
Cons
Lots of features - it takes a while to get familiar with everything. But this can also be a good thing.
Pros
Does everything that MS project does but in my opinion is easier to use.
Cons
Needs tinkering when importing MS project files
Summary
...close to this
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
I was initially under the impression I wouldn't find anything decent for my Macbook and almost resigned myself to having to work in a VM for project management until someone suggested I use Merlin. What an awesome product. Extremely well made, versatile, feature rich, and easy to use. The dragging of MPP's into Merlin works perfectly and some of the export options are great.
I'll continue using the Beta for the next month and if all continues to go as well as this I'll be putting in my order. I'd like to see it a little cheaper, but then again, for the functionality you get, its still a bargain, maybe I'll just have to wait for the promo deal on it.
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
I am working now for over one year with Merlin and in this time it has been developed to the major tool for projects!
It includes (almost) all needed functions for a project manager's work and present it in a very usable and pretty interface. Each single function makes clear to me, they have thought about it - not from a developers perspective - but with their project managers eyes. And I think this is one of the (or maby the biggest) factor of success: These guys are project managers!
Of course it is not bug free - I don't know any application which is bug free - but the responsiveness of the support team, and the performance of the developers are beating any other application in that field.
Long time ago Merlin was treated as an insider tip. Now I have to say: Merlin is the standard on Mac OS X.
Standard disclaimer: I am not beeing paid for writing this!
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
The demo is for 40 activities. That means a list of 40 activities in the activities window not activations as I read it. This means that after 40 you can't save. Unfortunately the reminder of this is ambiguous. I wish it had read "You have created 40 activities and are no longer able to save. Please buy a license etc etc etc". It would spare the â??gung hoâ?? like me spending all morning creating a demo template of over 100 activities and not reading the alert properly. I lost the mornings work. Yes I know, I know. I should read it very carefully and all that but on hitting APPLE S I though I WAS saving and that the pop up was just a reminder.
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
I've been using Merlin for several months now and I'm quite satisfied with it. It helps to organize my projects and to look at them from different viewpoints. What I really use a lot is the multiple project view (a feature which is not common in competitive tools). Nice interface, fits in perfectly with Mac OSX. There are certain bugs sometimes, but no major trouble. PDF export could be enhanced, but I must say, I haven't upgraded to the latest version yet.
Christian
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
I have used Merlin since it was launched and the improvements they have added in a short time are truly impressive. It is a great app, easy to use yet complex enough to handle larger projects. The price is high, but to me, it is well worth it. Their support pages on their web site have also improved significantly and are very helpful (as are the people responding to support questions). I particularly like the integration with the great Mind-Mapping app NovaMind. Fabulous! Please keep up the good work.
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
I thought this was a pretty good product with some ideas that are excellent. The web publishing part is very simple for the moment but could develop to be extremely useful. I've used a number of these project web sites, and there's nothing better than a single page with everything on it.
The fact that the GANT charts are attractive looking is no mean feat. This kind of thing is important and most gant charts generated by this type of program look clunky.
Some of the details need to be finalised, but contact with the developer's team has been excellent, and they appear to be onto something good with this program.
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
Downloaded Merlin today an started to create a project. Thus, the app isn't too common to me, but I think I tried the major stuff.
Results:
- Resources seem to be importable from the OS X address book only. This is useless, since my resources aren't in the AB. Thus, I had to create dummy contacts in the AB to create resources.
- Some parts aren't too intuitive. I'd expect popup menues for more or less all entries of list boxes. I found, that there are more or less no pop up. Well, I certainly can use the toolbar or keyboard shortcuts, but I prefer to get operation details in place.
- Merlin doesn't save projects in files, but seems to keep a central project repository. Sorry, but I don't like this too. I'd like to keep each and any project in a single file.
- Regarding registration: I had a demo key and tried to install the just ordered one - which took roughly 20 minutes. Registration is part of the app preferences, not an own menu item in the apple or help menu. But the latter menus would be much simpler way to access. Moreover, if you already have a demo serial, you can't import the real serial in Merlin directly. You need to open the real serial, Merlin then imports the file.
- Preference toolbar icons should be nicer. But well, this isn't a real problem.
- Those big 'I tell you what this list box is for' rectangles are not too bad, but very non-standard. I'd prefer to have standard little help pannels, which appear, if I don't move my pointer. The bug rectangles are not too nice, since you need to find the related checkbox to turn them off in preferences.
All in all, Merlin will be a great app. For now, it needs some immediate updates.
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