• Ideas Are Cheap Execution Is Everything Xtuple Open Source

States are reportedly. 'Oklahoma, Alabama and Mississippi have authorized nitrogen for executions and are developing protocols to use it, which represents a leap into the unknown,' reports The New York Times. 'There is no scientific data on executing people with nitrogen, leading some experts to question whether states, in trying to solve old problems, may create new ones.' Slashdot reader shares an excerpt from a report via The New York Times: What little is known about human death by nitrogen comes from industrial and medical accidents and its use in suicide. In accidents, when people have been exposed to high levels of nitrogen and little air in an enclosed space, they have died quickly. In some cases co-workers who rushed in to rescue them also collapsed and died. Nitrogen itself is not poisonous, but someone who inhales it, with no air, will pass out quickly, probably in less than a minute, and die soon after - from lack of oxygen.

The same is true of other physiologically inert gases, including helium and argon, which kill only by replacing oxygen. Death from nitrogen is thought to be painless. It should prevent the condition that causes feelings of suffocation: the buildup of carbon dioxide from not being able to exhale.

Humans are highly sensitive to carbon dioxide - too much brings on the panicky feeling of not being able to breathe. Somewhat surprisingly, the lack of oxygen doesn't trigger that same reflex.

Someone breathing pure nitrogen can still exhale carbon dioxide and therefore should not have the sensation of smothering. Not a fan of the death penalty but if you're going to check-out, be it by choice or inflicted then this is one of the nicest ways to go (& cheap/simple).

Light headed & pass out. Helium balloons work too but you need a mask to keep the thing in place.

What's good for CO2 scrubbing? A simple balloon rebreather & CO2 absorber should do the job if a bit slower while the O2 converts.

I guess I'm coming at this problem from the euthanasia angle rather than the 'kill our citizens' one. Not speaking from experience realise.;) well I think we've all gone light-headed with the Helium thing. It's no more gas chamber than the room you're currently sitting in is a gas chamber (because it has air - a gas - in it). Nitrogen just happens to be the gas used because it's the most easily accessible and cheapest. But you could use any other gas as long as it's not oxygen. Even CO2 despite it triggering the short of breath reflex.

Loss of consciousness from complete oxygen deprivation happens within about 15 seconds, and death within about a minute. That's why the safety briefing on planes tells yo. It's a basic principle of osmosis. Basically, osmosis means that if you have two different solutions (chemistry definition) that pass by each other with a semi-permeable membrane in between, that the parts of the solutions that can pass through the membrane will tend to equalize in concentration on both sides of the membrane.

When you breathe, there are two solutions (your blood and the air) that are separated by a semi-permeable membrane (your lungs). The air is mostly nitrogen (78%) and about about 21% oxygen in it. Your blood has oxygen and CO2 in it. The membrane in your lungs allows oxygen and CO2 to pass through it. In the normal case, the amount of oxygen in your blood is less than the amount of oxygen in the air.

Easycap 4ch usb dvr drivers for mac. The amount of CO2 in your blood is also higher than the amount of CO2 in the air. Your body takes the Oxygen out of your blood, converts it in to CO2 through metabolism, and puts the CO2 back in to your blood. Since the concentration of oxygen in your blood is lower than the concentration of oxygen in your lungs, oxygen will move from the air in your lungs in to your blood until the two concentrations equalize. Same for CO2.The higher concentration of CO2 in your blood will move to the air in your lungs until the two concentrations equalize.

Then you exhale the low-oxygen/high-CO2 air in your lungs and inhale fresh air.repeat. In order for the above process to work, the membrane in your lungs has to be a two-way street. Oxygen needs to come in, CO2 needs to go out. The membrane is bidirectional. The way a Nitrogen chamber works is that the gas in the nitrogen chamber is very close to 100% nitrogen.

The percentage of both oxygen and CO2 in the air is nearly zero. You now breath this new solution in and osmosis works the same way. The oxygen and CO2 concentrations between the two solutions equalizes. So you have blood returning to your lungs that has a high-concentration of CO2 and a low-concentration of Oxygen. The solution on the other side of the membrane in your lungs is pretty much 0% oxygen and 0% CO2. Since the concentrations want to equalize, this means that both CO2 AND oxygen from your blood is moving to the air in your lungs.

Which you then exhale. This effectively causes oxygen to leave your body.

If the concentration of Oxygen in the blood returning to your lungs is at 16%, then when the oxygen in your blood equalizes with the 0% oxygen gas in your lungs, it causes you to now have 8% oxygen in your blood and 8% oxygen in your lungs. You now exhale causing that oxygen that was in your blood and now in your lungs to leave your body, inhaling a 'fresh breath' of nearly 100% nitrogen.8% oxygen in your blood and 0% oxygen in your lungs will equalize at 4%.etc.

Holding your breath means the air in your lungs still has oxygen in it. 20% oxygen in your lungs (normal air), 16% oxygen in your blood. They will both equalize at 18%. Now when the blood comes around again, you've got 12% oxygen in your blood and 18% oxygen in your lungs.it equalizes at 15%.etc.

The rate at which the oxygen level in your blood lowers when you hold your breath is much less than the rate it lowers when you breath 100% nitrogen air. Holding your breath does have the downside of also not exhaling the CO2 in your blood.

It's the high concentrations of CO2 in your blood that cause the suffocation feeling. Holding your breath won't let the CO2 out of your lungs and blood. Breathing in Nitrogen causes the CO2 to respirate out of your body normally. This is why you don't feel like you're suffocating when you breath 100% nitrogen air. They say that your vision quickly fades, you shortly afterwards pass out, and then shortly after that die. It's the same reason they tell you to put your oxygen mask on in a plane before you help others.

You will pass out quite quickly, because your lungs change from an oxygen input system to an oxygen output system-your lungs work by osmosis. At 40,000 ft, you'll pass out in 15-20 seconds-whereas most people can hold your breath for 1-2 minutes (without training). Also keep in mind this is 'useful consciousness', not death.

You will be living, but unconscious, for a while longer. If the plane descends quickly enough, you'll simply wake up with no permanent effects. What this means is that the prisoner could extend their life for 1-2 minutes by holding their breath.

But eventually, they'll run out of oxygen either way, and it gets quite uncomfortable to hold your breath for an extended period of time due to the buildup of CO2 and lung reflexes. You also wouldn't want to hold your breath during explosive decompression, because your lungs would be at risk of damage or rupture. So either way, if you're at high altitude without oxygen or a suit, you're in serious trouble. Likewise if you're strapped to a table and people are just waiting for you to finally breathe and die. Source: 1 stackexchange.com (See the accepted answer there, although the FAA has updated their website). 2 geoffreylandis.com.

Said it was the #1 choice of his when it was time to go. I've actually seen it. The airline pilot has it even worse as he is deprived partially but not wholly of it.

With pure N2 you have about 2-3 breaths and you're done. You don't even notice how quickly you go under because you think you're getting air all the while there's nothing in your lungs to help Oxygenate your blood. Ever hear of patients passing out during respirometries? They literally can't last 10 seconds with depleted lungs, and in those scenarios even attempting to fully breath out your lungs still actually have some air in them. I went with a technician to fix an NIR analyser one day. We opened the door to the analyser hut. He stepped forward, not even in the hut, still in the doorway, and collapsed.

He hit the ground before his gas detector was able to alert him of lack of oxygen it was that quick. I grabbed him by the foot and dragged him away. Guy survived by had horrible scratches on his face, not that he was complaining about the rescue method. Gave me a very big respect for confined spaces with gas bottles in them. Stupid thing was this hut had two doors. The other door had a flashing light above it indicating low O2 in the hut. Whoever fitted these huts only bought one beacon for each assuming they all only had one door.

You don't even notice how quickly you go under because you think you're getting air all the while there's nothing in your lungs to help Oxygenate your blood. It's worse than that. If your breathing gas has 0 atm ppO2 (partial pressure of O2), your lung contents ppO2 is lower than the ppO2 of your bloodstream. This means osmosis pulls O2 out of your blood in an attempt to equalize the partial pressures of the gas on each side of the semi-permeable membrane. Of course, it also pulls CO2 out, so your body doesn't get the 'I'm suffocating!' Signal that high ppCO2 in the bloodstream signals. The only legit moral issue with the death penalty is that it's imperative to be completely sure you have a guilty man; admittedly, our system is awful at this.

Death penalty or not, the system should not convict the innocent at all. I makes me sad how many people harp on death penalty while happily allowing confessions and eye witnesses to be used at trials.

Those have been proven to be easily manipulated and directly responsible for imprisoning the innocent. It's as if thousands of lifetimes behind bars is better than even one execution. There's also the issue of settlements.

Those basically allow the rich and powerful to skirt the law because the state can't be bothered to fight it all the way. Meanwhile, the poor with their overworked public defenders don't have the resources to fight the long battle, and, regardless of their innocence, have to settle for a plea bargain. HOWEVER you must still question WHY KILL?. It prevents the offender from hurting anyone again. startribune.com Incarcerated murder kill prison staff and other prisoners, google.com, or serve out their sentences and re-offend. It deters as surely as lesser punishments deter, like incarceration or fines.

Charts of death penalty vs. Murder rate in the US underscore this point. It's curious to assert that lesser punishments deter, but the harshest does not. It's the closest to justice as we can get (i.e. A commensurate cost imposed on the offender). Most think the offender should incur some cost for malicious pain inflicted on others. Codes of justice going back to Hammurabi reflect a sense of fairness that it should be commensurate.

I'm not the OP you were responding to, but I am currently anti-death penalty. Currently, my only two issues with the death penalty are: 1) It must be done humanely. If there is a method of execution that is fast and completely painless.

I currently believe that the only method of execution that satisfies this issue is Nitrogen gas. People who have survived high-nitrogen gas environments said they didn't feel any pain. Just blacked out and woke up later.maybe had a headache after waking. I don't know of any known instances of someone saying that it was a painful experience. I may be wrong on this though.I haven't fully researched it. 2) You must have 100% concrete evidence that this person actually committed the crime that they are accused of. I consider this to be even higher than the legal standard of proof in the US called 'Beyond reasonable doubt'.

You need another legal standard of proof that I don't believe exists. I would call it 'Beyond Possible Doubt'. Basically this would mean that if the defense can come up with a possible explanation of the evidence presented that suggested he didn't do the crime, then it's up to the prosecution to prove that is explanation didn't happen.If you can prove the crime 'beyond a reasonable doubt' then it's life in prison.if you can prove it 'beyond possible doubt' then it's the death penalty. This story leads me to a very humorous event at work. While working on a A/C system, I noted to an inspector that the dry nitrogen in the system (used to pressure test the pipes) needed to be released into the atmosphere. This A/C was for a temporary building in the middle of a wide open yard for a power company.

Well this idea.releasing a gas into the atmosphere was enough to trigger multiple phone calls, and eventually a 4 week delay, since there was about 3 very important meetings about this deadly concept. I noted to the inspector that air contains 78% Nitrogen. But, he was not convinced, and knew that his job was now question. Finally, the mighty minds, agreed to let me take out the nitrogen, but it needed to be recovered. This time, I kept my mouth shut, and 'recovered' the nitrogen.

All was well, and the power company lives to see another day.:). You know what? If I was condemned to death, I'd want a pullet through the head.

That's VERY quick and painless. If a state is callous enough to consider the killing of human beings an acceptable form of punishnment, why is it so fixated on killing them by pumping them full of chemicals or gasses? If the state officials want to sanitize the act of murdering a human being, all they have to do is stick them into a box with some kind of automated mechanism to fire a bullet through the person's head inside the box. Okay, say three bullets to be extra-sure. Then if they really, REALLY don't want to deal with the mess, they can take out the closed box whole for incineration.

All they'd have to watch is a guy going into a box, and the guy inside the box would never suffer. No need for all that nitrogen nonsense. Incidentally, all these talks of gassing prisoners reeks of wikipedia.org. I'm surprised our powers-that-be don't try at all costs to steer clear away from the immediate parallel those of us with a memory are certain to draw. We seek better and better, more and more 'clinical' means of state-sanctioned killing.

First the electric chair, then gas, then injection, then back to gas, apparently. It's almost as if we don't want to admit what the state is doing in the public's name. Personally, if we're going to keep the death penalty, I'd like to see the judge, jury members, and DA draw straws to be on a firing squad. If people are willing to sentence others to death, they should be willing to put their 'money where their mouth' is. Better yet, get rid of capital punishment. Wasteful, expensive for appeals, and too much risk of a wrongful convicting that can't be reversed. See also: Cameron Todd Willingham and the West Memphis Three.

Inert gas narcosis on air/nitrox doesn't become a significant concern until past 4ata / 100fsw. For air that's a PPN2 of 3.12. Breathing 100% N2 at 1 ata wouldn't even remotely induce any type of narcosis. This is different the breathing in fresh N2 with each breath. Breathing is controlled by CO2 levels and this method tricks the body into thinking everything is fine by keeping CO2 levels low in the body.

Very effective. You never know what hit you. Now why are we trying to 'solve old problems'? That's purely a political problem not a technical problem. Inert gas narcosis on air/nitrox doesn't become a significant concern until past 4ata / 100fsw. For air that's a PPN2 of 3.12. Breathing 100% N2 at 1 ata wouldn't even remotely induce any type of narcosis.

If you want the prisoner to enjoy his execution, you could put him in a hyperbaric chamber and pressurize it to about 6 atmospheres, then replace the gas with pure N2. PPN2 would go from 4.68 (moderate narcosis) to 6 (strong narcosis), as PPO2 went from 1.26 to 0. As a diver, I've long said that if I'm diagnosed with a painful or debilitating terminal disease that leaves me sufficiently healthy for a while, I'd spend time with family until I got to just before the point that I didn't want to live any more. Funny how you seem ok with killing everything that is good in someone's life (their freedom, access to their loved ones, etc.), yet seem concerned about when they technically die. Your 'nah we can always change our mind after a lifetime thrown away' attitude is extremely disturbing. 'Oops, sorry, we made a mistake.

You are now 75, jobless, penniless, and entirely without friends or family in the world. You have no idea what happened in society in the last 40 years, but good luck out there. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.' Locking someone away for life should not have a lower standard than killing them. This is the top search result for suicide on the web. The act is painless,inexpensive and generally safe.

If you want to pass from this world, you should get acquainted with nitrogen masks. Our atmosphere is 79% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, and 1% argon. We all breath in nitrogen with no impact. If we have too much carbon dioxide in our air our bodies try to pass the bad air and get rid of the CO2. To much CO2 in our lungs and we panic. If we don't have oxygen, we get dizzy and pass out in a couple of breaths.

Dead in 4 minutes. NO panic, rapid lose of consciousness.

Death while unconscious. I am not a fan of executions, but if the state wants to kill them, this is far more humane then lethal injection, electrocutions, hanging or firing squad. They do need protocols. The nitrogen should be medical grade (ie not have any hydrocarbons) so once the act is finished spectators won't be impacted. The gas needs to be applied with a breathing mask, so the CO2 is removed with every breath and replaced with nitrogen to prevent any panic. The mask can be plumbed so the exhalations are removed such that they don't impact the O2 level in the room. There should be O2 level sensors in the room so any system failure would alert attending guards.

The execution can be designed such that the only the execution victim suffers oxygen deprivation. There is no need to remove oxygen from the whole room. I am not sure anyone should be executed, but if they are going to be executed, I think this is the best way. Oklahoma, Alabama and Mississippi It's strange that places that have the highest distrust of government also are cool with the government executing people. Just yesterday, there was a story of a guy who was on death row for 16 years before he was completely exonerated.

I would think that just one of those cases would be enough so that anyone with a moral compass would oppose the death penalty. But if there's one thing we know, it's that Americans love seeing people get kilt and they love feeling self-righteous, so that makes for a lethal combination. People in red states seem to love giving their governments the ultimate power over life and death. Fortunately, there's absolutely nothing in Oklahoma, Alabama, or Mississippi that anyone here would want, so this only affects the poor folks who live there. But it does explain why they're at the bottom of almost every state ranking of quality of life. The problem with quoting the 8th amendment is that it ignores the Fifth.

'No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor. The problem with N2 is that some prisoners are going to hold their breath for 3-4 minutes, then start breathing the N2.

While the comments are accurate about people who want to die, or accidentally die via N2 being quick and painless, its going to be pretty ghastly to watch some guy hold his breath until blue, then start gasping for air, then go unconscious and die. Some guy will train himself for a 7+ minute breath hold.

Other forms of execution aren't affected by prisoner choice - seems an obviously cruel method to let people live as long as they can hold their breath. There's another problem with nitrogen.

It's too humane. If the objective was to simply kill painlessly, all it would need is a couple of bullets to the head. People, though, are bastards.

They may talk about 'justice,' but what they really mean is 'vengeance.' The public want a show. The family of any victim want a show. Politicians want a show. Many people will feel physically sickened if they believe the condemned died peacefully, as if the scales remain somehow unbalanced. This is why nitrogen was not introduced as a mean of execution years ago. Not many people are bold enough to openly say they want to see just a little bit of torture first, but it's a very common sentiment.

Lead is more effective, quicker too. Personally I'm staunchly against the so-called, 'Death Penalty,' for a number of reasons, and not necessarily those you'd think, on account of I don't think quite like most people, but that all said, the idea that the 'state' has a problem figuring out how to murder those among its own citizenry whom they've decided to murder, suggests their government is being done by utter incompetent morons. Killing people, and doing so quickly and reliably, is one of the easier things there is to do.far simpler a task than say, ensuring there's a roof over every head, or food in every belly, etc.

A high-powered bullet fired into the back of the head at point-blank range would be very effective, and reasonably humane if for some reason you wanted to murder people judicially, AND cared about that sort of thing. It'd also be cheap, and in this country, not hard to come-by. If you like, call it death by lethal plumbum injection.

Hell, that even sounds funny because to someone who doesn't know how to say 'lead' in other languages, it sounds like death is being accomplished by shoving a stonefruit up someone's ass. (Plum-bum, get it?). the idea that the 'state' has a problem figuring out how to murder those among its own citizenry whom they've decided to murder, suggests their government is being done by utter incompetent morons. Killing people, and doing so quickly and reliably, is one of the easier things there is to do. The United States is not short of ways to deliberately murder people. It's just short of ways to do it that involve convincing themselves that they are not deliberately murdering people. It has to feel like a clinical procedure, otherwise you may as well just be chopping off heads with a sword in the public square.

The United States is not short of ways to deliberately murder people. It's just short of ways to do it that involve convincing themselves that they are not deliberately murdering people.

Murder means the death is immoral or unwarranted. Even bad guys might be convicted of 'man slaughter' instead of 'murder'. We deliberately kill people found guilty of certain crimes; we don't deliberately murder them. We are short on ways to humanely end a life. There are three ethical sticky points on capital punishment.

Mistakes do happen, so any execution must take place after sufficient time has elapsed to discover such grave mistakes. Secondly, the execution must be as humane as humanly possible.

In any case, a country that concerns itself with justice would never take from one single man that which it can not return without just cause. Unfortunately even imprisonment kind of falls in that category - you can't return time to a person's life either. The only thing they can return should an inmate be exonerated is their honor and standing in society.

And unfortunately we're moving away from that as well. For example, many applications and other forms that used to ask 'have you ever been convicted of a crime?' Now ask 'have you ever been arrested?'

- so false arrests, crimes for which you were found not guilty, crimes for which you were ex. The idea that the death penalty is a deterrent is ill-conceived.

It assumes that people who commit murder are rational and consider the long-term consequences of their actions, and that they think they are likely to get caught. But the reality is most murders are committed in the heat of a moment, by people with poor impulse control and little forethought. And when it's not in the heat of the moment, the killer generally thinks that they will get away with the crime. The severity of the penalty has absolutely no bearing on the murderer's thinking (or lack thereof) in either case.

Is there really a viable Microsoft Project alternative for project scheduling software to create project plans and timing plans? Find out with our newly updated article for 2018 which provides a cheaper pay as you go version of, some great new MS Project alternatives and a downloadable how-to guide for choosing a Microsoft Project alternative for your project schedules. If your company is feeling the pinch, your request to purchase a shiny new copy of Microsoft Project might elicit a response that goes something like; “.surely there is a free Microsoft Project alternative out there that can do the job, isn’t there?” You respond something like, “Umm, well, maybe”. And that’s the point of this article. For those of you who are on the hunt for a alternative, you’ve come to the right place. For a lot of agencies, the default project management tool for creating project plans is still Microsoft Project.

If we’re really honest, though, for most of the digital projects that we manage, Microsoft Project does far more than we ever need it for – it’s got stacks of features that most people never use, hasn’t really changed that much in 30 years, and doesn’t necessarily do much to streamline process within project management. So are there any real Microsoft Project alternatives – paid, or even better, for free – that are worth using? Wait a minute though Before looking for Microsoft Project alternatives, did you know that the real deal is actually not that expensive?

Why would you use Microsoft Project? For starters, Microsoft Project is not just a fuzzy old tool that Microsoft doesn’t really care about—they’re introducing some really smart with Power BI, Internet of Things, bots and machine learning that are awesome. How much does Microsoft Project cost? It’s simple and affordable to. In fact, now you can pick up a copy of Microsoft Project on There’s also been an interesting shift in the Microsoft Project alternative world with pricing that it’s worth being aware of.

The cloud-based, online Microsoft Project alternatives are now almost all charging by the user— rather than by the number of projects—which is making MS Project alternatives on average cost about $180/user/year; much more expensive than they used to be. They’re also nearly all transitioning from being simple Gantt chart tools to trying to include project, task and resource management tools. In short, making your choice of an MS Project alternative is becoming more complex. What is Microsoft Project used for? MS Project is a project management tool used by different types of users, who have different levels of access.

The software provides tables, views, filters, fields, calendars, and a database for doing things like:. Developing project plans. Assigning resources. Tracking time & progress. Creating Gantt charts. Creating & managing budgets. Balancing workloads.

Scheduling tasks & resources. Creating graphical reports. Storing project data in a shared database Best Microsoft Project Alternatives For Project Scheduling Software. In this review of Microsoft Project alternatives, we break down the features, pricing, pros & cons of the following tools:. GanttPRO –.

Celoxis –. Clarizen –. Wrike –. Smartsheet –.

ProjectLibre –. Tom’s Planner –. Omniplan –. Merlin Project 5 –. Team Gantt – Project Scheduling Software Selection Criteria (For A Microsoft Project Alternative) We’re project managers, right, so let’s first define the requirements.

We need to properly define what our alternative needs to do. There are loads of project scheduling software alternatives out there, many of which do all kinds of things that we, as digital project managers will never make use of, so what do we actually use it for? GanttPRO – GanttPRO is online Gantt chart software with lots of useful features. If you are not new to the world of project management, you know how painful it is to find a nice looking and powerful Gantt chart and a MS Project alternative. In GanttPRO, you will find both.

This Gantt chart tool looks really nice with its intuitive UX/UI design. Besides, it offers a wide range of project management features. Here you can easily create tasks, assign them, and connect them with dependencies, set milestones, enable the critical path to see the most important tasks or create a baseline to compare a current state of your plan with what you have initially planned. Thanks to the auto-scheduling function, any change in your tasks, dates or dependencies will be automatically reflected. GanttPRO is also a good collaboration tool.

It allows users to comment on tasks, export, import and share charts with Public URL as well as get notifications, mention team members, browse History mode, etc. You can try a 14-day free trial or book a. A plan for 1 user starts from $15 if billed annually. Team plans start from $5.90 per user if billed annually. Summary of GanttPRO:. Create a Gantt chart: Pass. Create a project overview chart: Pass.

Import and export.mpp files: Pass. Export PDF’s or shareable project plans: Pass Score: 9. Celoxis – More than just a Gantt chart tool, Celoxis is a comprehensive but easy to use, project management tool used by HBO, Deloitte and Rolex that handily comes in two flavours – as an online app or on-premise. When compared to MS Project, it’s a lower cost, yet fuller featured product with powerful interactive Gantt charts, handy portfolio dependencies and all the keyboard shortcuts you could want. Just as you would with Microsoft Project, Celoxis allows you to create tasks, subtasks, milestones, assigned resources and dependencies to tasks.

It is a comprehensive and enterprise-grade integrated solution that you can use to not only create Gantt charts but also use to manage your project portfolios, workflows, expenses, time sheets and resources. It is really a complete and full-featured project management tool with project tracking, resource management, risk management and reporting all rolled into one, together with the full-blown capabilities for collaboration with clients. Celoxis offer the option of a or a if you’re looking to take it for a test drive. Celoxis costs $25/user/month for SaaS users and $450/user for on-premise.

Summary of Celoxis:. Create a Gantt chart: Pass.

Create a project overview chart: Pass. Import and export.mpp files: Pass.

Export PDF’s or shareable project plans: Pass Score: 9. Clarizen – Companies are quickly finding that traditional, siloed, on-premises project planning and task management tools don’t work well in today’s environment. These tools are too complex and too narrowly focused and do not have the real-time information, the responsive planning and flexibility required to keep everyone in the loop and everything on track. While, it’s easy to download a simple task management tool, they do not support the collaborative interaction needed to complete process or project related tasks. By contrast, delivers secure, cloud-based collaborative work management solutions built on the vision of business agility. Discussions, tasks, projects and portfolios are all accessible from Clarizen’s scalable enterprise platform. Wrike – To illustrate the point that the crossover between cloud-based Gantt chart creating Microsoft Project alternatives and project management tools is narrowing, it’s worth considering an all in one project management and scheduling tool like While it doesn’t fall neatly into our selection criteria (it does much more than simply create Gantt charts), it’s worth including as an alternative way of approaching the challenge to create shareable project plans. It’s a project management tool more akin to, or – based around tasks, Wrike allows you to define and assign tasks and track their progress in real-time.

You can easily import your.mpp Microsoft Project plans into the interface, although exporting is limited to.XLS. The Gantt chart view works but the control of interdependencies and predecessors is a bit cumbersome so it’s not a clean like for like solution, but it’s definitely a workable solution. For the price (which they’ve priced very competitively), you can create Gantt charts and you’ve then armed with a swathe of other project management tools and potential integrations and features that you might find useful.

Wrike costs from $9.80/user/month. Summary of Wrike:.

Create a Gantt chart: Pass. Create a project overview chart: Fail. Import and export mpp files: Pass. Export PDF’s or shareable project plans: Pass Score: 8. Smartsheet – Smartsheet’s online project management tool takes some of the most useful features of Project, marries it with the ease of use of an online spreadsheet, and then layers in team collaboration and time-saving automation features. It’s a paid, cloud hosted and web-based system complete with mobile apps which enable some pretty powerful collaborative tools with alerts and reminders as the project timeline changes over time. It delivers the basics well – creating pretty drag and drop Gantt charts with tasks, subtasks, milestones, assigned resources and dependencies to tasks.

It also offers a broader capability for resource management, reporting, and forms; they’ve begun to layer on a lot of features although I’m not sure how helpful they really are in the world of digital project management. Smartsheet is one of the better-known products and with good reason – it’s a solid product. The only real snags are the inability to produce a high-level project summary and the inability to export as a.mpp; you can only export as XML.

Smartsheet costs from $14/user/month. Summary of Smartsheet:. Create a Gantt chart: Pass. Create a project overview chart: Fail. Import and export.mpp files: Fail.

Export PDF’s or shareable project plans: Pass Score: 8. ProjectLibre – ProjectLibre is a fork from OpenProj, a free, open source desktop application designed to pretty closely emulate Microsoft Project of old. It does a reasonable job of imitating the layout and interface of Project so if you’re familiar with it, you’ll be able to download it and get going with very little learning curve; it’s easy to create a simple Gantt chart with the usual workflow; creating indented work breakdown structure (WBS), set durations, create links and assign resources. It even opens.mpp files although it can’t save them back to the same format, instead saving them as XML files which are annoying. It all sounds good, but when you try using it, you can’t help but wish you were just using Microsoft Project; it’s just very clunky, ugly, and fiddly to use. Yes, it’s free, but do yourself a favour and spend a few bucks to get something that actually works properly.

ProjectLibre is free! Summary of ProjectLibre:. Create a Gantt chart: Pass. Create a project overview chart: Fail.

Import and export.mpp files: Fail. Export PDF’s or shareable project plans: Fail Score: 3. Tom’s Planner – Tom’s Planner is paid web-based Gantt chart software that allows anyone to create, collaborate and share Gantt Charts online with drag and drop simplicity. It’s billed as a more simple and collaborative alternative to Project, but is really aimed at replacing teams trying to collaborate using Excel. Because of that, it looks a lot like MS Excel – there isn’t a way to define dependencies and defining non-working time (e.g. Bank holidays).

That said, if you’re looking to produce a simple project plan, it’s pretty good. It’s web based, extremely intuitive and easy-to-use. A great feature is being able to publish your charts online and invite others to collaborate on projects (a free account suffices to accept invitations), add links to other websites and other online documents and embed your schedule in your own blog/website or intranet. The real selling point here is that it’s online, shareable, and collaborative, the downside is that it’s very basic. Tom’s Planner costs from $7.50/user/month.

Summary of Tom’s Planner:. Create a Gantt chart: Fail. Create a project overview chart: Fail. Import and export.mpp files: Fail. Export PDF’s or shareable project plans: Pass Score: 6. Omniplan – Alright, there you go, for you crazy digital project managers who are still holding on to your creative side, and are playing around on Macs, here’s a couple of desktop based option for you.

Desktop-based Microsoft Project alternatives are important because we can’t always be on the interwebs, like when we’re on planes (yes, I know, some of them offer overpriced terribly slow WiFi but you know what I mean). Omniplan is made by the Omni group – makers of Omnigraffle, so these peeps know what they’re doing. It delivers the basics well – creating pretty drag and drop Gantt charts with tasks, subtasks, milestones, assigned resources and dependencies to tasks.

Powered by your own, or the Omni sync server, it also has some more advanced collaboration features which work pretty nicely. Keeping projects up-to-date is powered by whole-project sharing where change-tracking, automatic publishing, and instant updates notify you when changes are made to the timeline, tasks, or amount of work completed, Omniplan allows you to accept or reject the changes one by one, or en masse. Omniplan costs from $149.99/user.

Summary of Omniplan:. Create a Gantt chart: Pass. Create a project overview chart: Fail. Import and export.mpp files: Pass.

Export PDF’s or shareable project plans: Pass Score: 8. Merlin Project 5 – In its latest iteration, Merlin Project 5 works pretty well. It’s a great Mac alternative to Microsoft Project, and looks very similar, with many of the granular controls for creating project plans that many of the other options out there gloss over. You can create tasks and subtasks with dependencies and constraints, add work and duration separately, assign resources with an option to decrease duration or increase work, see how much work each resource has assigned, and add your own fields to each task, for which you can define the field type (e.g. Checkbox, date, etc.).

Merlin Project 5 also comes with some cool new features such as Kanban board, resource pools, mind mapping and even a standalone app available in the Apple App Store. Importing in and out of Merlin is pretty straightforward, import native MPP and export MS Project XML, but you lose a lot of formatting which is annoying. Merlin Project 5 costs $99/year.

Summary of Merlin:. Create a Gantt chart: Pass. Create a project overview chart: Pass. Import and export.mpp files: Pass(ish). Export PDF’s or shareable project plans: Pass Score: 8.5. Team Gantt – TeamGantt is swanky looking and reasonably robust Project alternative.

It’s a paid, web-based (and mobile-friendly) project management tool that delivers the basics of creating pretty Gantt charts, with the ability to create tasks, subtasks, milestones, assign resources and dependencies to tasks. It places considerable emphasis on individuals, giving them the ability to see what they’re scheduled to work on that week as well as an overview of all the projects they’re working on. This enables an interesting feature to support in-project conversations and file uploads for team collaboration (although I’m not really sure it does it as well as a tool like or ). The real selling point is that it’s pretty and does the basics well. The downside is that the functionality is a bit too limited without support for import and export of.mpp files. Team Gantt costs from $29/10 x projects/month. Summary of Team Gantt:.

Create a Gantt chart: Pass. Create a project overview chart: Fail. Import and export.mpp files: Fail. Export PDF’s or shareable project plans: Pass Score: 8. Microsoft Project Online Professional – Well done for making it all the way down to the bottom.

Here’s your prize. Not many people seem to be aware of this product, and even Microsoft keep pretty quiet about it, but there’s an alternative to spending $500 on a Microsoft Project licence, you can pay as you go. And get the control and capabilities of Project Professional 2016 from virtually anywhere as an always up-to-date desktop subscription through Office 365. The upside is that you get what you wanted from the start; you don’t need a Project alternative when you can actually pretty much have the real deal. The downside is that all those bells and whistles and add-ons that you can get with some of the other products might actually be quite useful after all. Summary of Microsoft Project Pro for Office 365:. Create a Gantt chart: Pass.

Create a project overview chart: Pass. Import and export.mpp files: Pass.

Export PDF’s or shareable project plans: Pass Score: 10. Microsoft Project for Mac Microsoft doesn’t produce Microsoft Project for Mac users. In fact, the last time that there was a version of Microsoft Project for Apple users was back in 1993 with Microsoft Project 4.0 for Mac.

Sadly, that doesn’t work now! So if you’re on the Apple train and you’re trying to create a Gantt chart on a Mac, the first thing to remember is that you could just use Bootcamp or to get Windows on your Mac, and then use the PC software we’ve listed above. If you can’t do that, as well as the obvious web-based alternatives, there are a few dedicated Microsoft Project for Mac, Gantt chart options that you can install on your Apple Mac or iPad. X Plan ($79) –. Project Plan 365 ($99) –. Omniplan ($149.99) –. Merlin Project 5 ($349) – Other project scheduling software alternatives worth considering: There are some new kids on the Gantt chart block!

I haven’t had a chance to review these properly, but if none of the above work for you, it’s worth checking some of these out:. Edraw Project –. GanttProject –. ProjExec –. Rational Plan –. Ganttology –.

SmartDraw –. Creately –. Instagantt –. ProjectManager.com –. WorkZone –.

TaskRay –. Teamweek –. Hyper Plan – The Best Microsoft Project Alternatives So what is the best to use as a Microsoft Project alternative? It really depends on whether or not you subscribe to the requirements we set out above. If you’re actually looking for something a bit more than that, then one of the cloud-based solutions like would probably work out well.

As I often find myself offline, on planes and in the wilds of BC, I would miss having a desktop app to churn out my.mpp’s on the road. So in short, my preference would be for Microsoft Project Pro for Office 365 – it does everything I want it to do, in the format I need it. Yes, it’s kind of a cop out but it works – and it’s actually no more expensive than any of the better, paid, alternatives. And if you’re a Mac user, you’re probably best off getting a PC, or failing that, try using Omniplan. So in short, my preference would be for Microsoft Project Pro for Office 365 – it does everything I want it to do, in the format I need it.

Yes, it’s kind of a cop-out but it works – and it’s actually no more expensive than any of the better, paid, alternatives. What to consider But with so many options on the table, what are the things worth considering when choosing a Microsoft Project alternative? I think it’s worth thinking about three areas when choosing a Microsoft Project alternative:. Functionality – does it do what I need it to do? (we’ve covered this already above).

Workflow – how nicely does this play with my other project management toolkit?. Cost – is this actually cheaper than Microsoft Project? Considering where the Gantt chart and project schedule is used in your workflow This is a bit of a catch-all, but in choosing a Microsoft Project alternative, it’s worth thinking about how you’re managing estimates, tasks, resources, budgets, risk, time sheets and project reporting.

There are features within Microsoft Project that support this, and many of the alternatives include them too. What do you do with your project plans and schedules? If they are just Gantt charts that get created at the beginning of a project and are then not updated, it’s very different from the requirement for a tool that needs daily updates.

Consider what you actually use project timelines for; do you print them off every day and baseline progress? How do you share that information with the project team and executive? Consider too how you’ll be updating the timeline throughout the project. Who will be using it? It’s worth considering if it will be just the project manager updating the project plan, or if the team will need to do it too. If the project timeline needs to be actively updated by the project team, it’s worth considering tools which are easy to use, and require minimal onboarding.

What other tools are you using? Microsoft Project integrates and plays nicely with its Microsoft buddies, SharePoint and Project Server which are enterprise based solutions capable of some incredibly smart things with Power BI, Internet of Things, bots and machine learning. Microsoft Project integrates with a lot of other applications and tools too, including JIRA using the Ceptah Plugin and Daptiv PPM. Are you always online?

Cloud-based project timeline apps can be great, and they can be kept more up to date with ‘live’ information but consider that they require an active internet connection to work. If you’re ever working offline, and got no cell reception, for example on a plane, you’ll be hooped and want a desktop application instead. Considering the cost of MS Project Alternatives The cost of Microsoft project tends to be one of the primary reasons that people look for an alternative. Microsoft Project isn’t cheap, but did you know that if you do a quick search on Amazon you can find the latest version of Projects vs users Most of the Microsoft Project alternatives are priced on a cost per user basis. So in working out which solution is the most affordable, consider what makes most sense for you; is it a tool that many people in the organization will need to use, or will it be used principally by the project manager? Lifetime cost of ownership While web-based apps might seem affordable in the short run, typically costing around $15/user/month, the cost of ownership over 3 years is actually the same as. About Ben Aston I’m Ben Aston, a digital project manager.

I've been in the industry for more than 10 years working in the UK at London’s top digital agencies including Dare, Wunderman, Lowe and DDB. I’ve delivered everything from video virals to CMS’, flash games to banner ads and eCRM to eCommerce sites. I’ve been fortunate enough to work across a wide range of great clients; automotive brands including Land Rover, Volkswagen and Honda; Utility brands including BT, British Gas and Exxon, FMCG brands such as Unilever, and consumer electronics brands including Sony. You got right list of Microsoft alternatives and summarized in detail.

As you said you will love to hear about any other alternative 🙂 I want to share proofhub. Its a feature rich tool and we are using it since 2012, we are quite happy with their service so i thought sharing can help your post to keep it refreshing ProofHub costs from $49/ Unlimited USERS /month Summary of ProofHub: Create a Gantt chart: Pass Create a project overview chart: Pass Import and export mpp files: Fail Export PDF’s or shareable project plans: Pass Overall score: 4/5 I will share more if i found more competitive alternative!

Also please let me know where I am wrong. Ben, Really liked the article and the brief listing format for the comparisons, proved very useful and timely, just had the experience you open with.

Is there nothing else out there etc? As a result, found your article. Coming from an equipment manufacturing environment, dealing with large scale consultants & Construction companies, the ability to develop, share and reiterate schedules in a consistent format, that they can readily import and export in and out of the clients larger project databases is important.

(in some cases it’s a contractual, project communications requirement). Hence the ability to import & export in.mpp is critical, it’s a shame that the developers for some of the online packages don’t provide this as a defacto standard feature. If there was consistent import/export format across multiple platforms, I think more of these smaller packages would be used more readily, especially by smaller contractors/equipment suppliers supplying into larger projects, where MS Project is simply not cost effective solution.

Ideas Are Cheap Execution Is Everything Xtuple Open Source

Having said that, from this same perspective, Primavera Project scheduling software is also prevalent on these larger projects and having a similar capability would be useful. I know Excel data can be imported and passed around, but it can be a bit of nightmare, trying to maintain the spreadsheet structure, maintaining the correct data types in fields etc. I’d be interested to hear back from readers, if there are any workable, or proven standard file formats for transferring data between these smaller scheduling software packages, into the larger Project schedule software systems. Thanks again for a clear and informative article. Thank you, Ben, for your review.

I just start experimenting after using MS Project for a long time. How do you think is Arike good for small projects? I can also share with you my personal discovery – GanttPRO – user-friendly online project planning soft which is free and will stay free forever for everyone who sign up now (well, developers promise it 🙂 ). For me I’ve found 5 features: – extremely untuitive interface – after using MS Project GanttPRO is like a child toy) – 360 view of my projects with a critical path and zooming – export to pdf, jpg, xlsx, ical – possibility to share my project plans with colleagues and clients giving the right to edit or the right to view project – perfect visibility – graphic interface is hotsy totsy)). Hi Ben, Great list! We’re a small company and we’ve found that our main criteria is we need “fixed work” resource allocation (versus “fixed duration”).

Other than Project 365 and OmniPlan, it seems all the other solutions use the fixed duration model. We’re trying to get away from Project because we don’t want to continue having to use an outside solution like Basecamp for file sharing and discussions, and we don’t have Macs (OmniPlan also requires an outside platform for file sharing). We signed up for Wrike because we loved the feature set, only to find they are fixed duration only. Do you (or anyone else reading this thread) have any recommendations for a cloud-based DPM platform that uses/allows a fixed work model and also integrates discussions, file sharing, etc. So we don’t have to run on two separate platforms like we are now? I just used Gantter.com and man did love the intuitive old time feel. It worked beautifully for a basic 12 item 56 point steel construction schedule.

Thanks for the Recommendation. I like bells and whistles as much as the next person but simplicity is also a wonderful thing sometimes. It was straight forward and quite like using MS project 2003. I also took a look at the Rational plan that is suggested above and as far as I can tell that too looks very good for a good price. I would likely purchase that if I did these schedules more often.

I am not sure if that really works but a possible solution would be to use a PM tool from a provider that runs on an AWS GovCloud (US). The service seems to be in compliance with ITAR: That would mean that instead of hosting the program on your internal server and handle version updates, the software producer would do it for you on a dedicated AWS GovCloud (US) machine and you would have the exact same benefits of a cloud/web-based PM tool. We haven’t tried that yet with RationalPlan but it could be a viable solution Interesting point of view, thanks! Fantastic review, thank you! I was just a bit surprised about the Merlin evaluation though. I use a Mac and found it to be the best Microsoft Project alternative I have tried. It looks very much like Project, and is sufficiently advanced.

That is: you can create tasks and subtasks with dependencies and constraints, add work and duration separately, assign resources with an option to decrease duration or increase work, see how much work each resource has assigned, and add your own fields to each task, for which you can define the field type (e.g. Checkbox, date, etc.) This last feature is why I dropped Omniplan – the devil’s in the detail!

I needed to add, and filter by, a number of checkboxes and custom dates next to each task (like “urgent” flag, “important” flag, date task was requested etc.). The only downside I found was being unable to save straight to mpp – you can save to xml and whoever has the latest Project version can open it, but older versions don’t. And a quick note about Omniplan: a great feature for those who frequently change task dates and assignments is that you can define whether to adjust duration or work in a clear option button, rather than indirectly by adjusting dates and work/duration values.

Hope you find this helpful! HI Ben, Interesting review but not quite sure how you missed Planner from PROJECT in a box. Now quite a mature product and completely free for ever for all organisations to download. We found in our commercial products that 80+percent of the plans people created in MS Project used a very basic set of functions, tasks, dependencies, groupings, resources etc so we provided these in a simple to use tool five years ago and now there are well over 100,000 users.

We find many people ditching MS Project to use this instead at an organisation wide level as well as on a new user at a time basis. Over the years we have added a lot to Planner so it now includes project accounting and costing model and uniquely is also a risk and issue/RAID tool so users can collect all their key project controls data in one place. Of course we also provide reports and all data and charts etc can be exported and dropped to clip board. We even provide two way exchange with MS Project and Excel.

We know of other customers who transfer to Primavera through this interface. Planner is used by many of our biggest global customers on some huge projects and also by the complete novice to create there first ever plans.

A full set of training videos and free technical support is also provided. Although it is free forever it doesn’t mean it is some simple trial tool, we continue to add interesting new features to it based on the dialog with our many customers.

Hope your readers find this a helpful update. Regards Malcolm West MD PROJECT in a box. Hi, Ben It is a great article and a rich collection of MS project alternatives.

Like you said you would like to hear about others too. I would like to represent TIEMCHART Tiemchart have been helping some of the largest organisation where were initially on MS Project. We have delivered a system that is also taking into account for Human, Material and Assets to account for project progress.

Please visit our website to understand bit more about how we are helping the industry. We would love to hear back from you and also will be thankful if you can kindly include our name in your list. Thanks & Regards.