I'm also sooo glad that I made the decision to bump GT last spring. I use Anki to make my own flashcards using images from FA and my own notes from qbanks. Much better I feel.
That's the way to go. I'm doing the same thing, and I will share it to the forum once I'm done making them. It will be complete - full FA, extra mnemonics, etc.
haha i'm doing the exact same thing. tried the 1 month free trial of GT and realized it was just a worse, paid version of anki. remember to use tags extensively. i have tags for major topics (biochem, micro, cardiovascular, etc.) as well as sources including qbanks. i also do sub-tags by sources (ie - "UWorld_Micro" or "NBME_Anatomy") so i can basically do a quick, selective review outside of my normal study questions. this, the browser feature and search features are 10x better than anything GT has as well.
other protips:
- change the background of your cards to black and the letter color to gray/silver. your eyes will thank you, especially if you use it for 1 hr+ daily.
- export and backup your deck regularly to dropbox/gdrive/box.com/flashdrives etc. (i do mine every night). this way if ankiweb is acting funny or messes up your deck for some reason you can just import your latest version and your deck won't be lost. my deck size right now is only at about 15 mb and that includes a ton of media. this is also way better than GT where you're at the whim of their servers and coders. i could use anki across multiple platforms even with no internet by just exporting my deck to a flashdrive.
- keep track of your progress: use first aid and an excel sheet to basically highlight the topics you've covered and to what degree (ones that i've done completely i highlight in green, ones that i have some of it covered yellow, etc.). i'm making mine up as I go through FA because it's a tedious process.
the only downsides to using anki for board prep (having to make your own cards and keep track of your progress) are far outweighed by its pros. i hear a lot of my classmates gripe about GT/FC being down or messing up their schedule and tell them about anki. some of them have made the switch but others just like forking over money for an inferior product when they could get a far better one with more customization and stability for free
