Defect tracking

Mercury Quality Center, also known as Test Director or HP Quality Center is a test management tool used to track requirements, write test cases, log defects, generate reports.

Do you use it? If yes, do you use it for everything mentioned above or you limit its use to log and track defects?

I have used Mercury for many years now, but not everywhere I've been. I have to say that the main reason I like it is because you can keep track of your defects so easily.

What other tools you can use to log and keep track of your defects?

Excel is a very good tool and basically you record every defect with info in the correspondent columns. You can name the columns anything that's relevant for you: defect logged by, assigned to, logged on the date..., comments, status.

Another tool I've used for defect tracking is Rational DDTS. This is a tool that generates an automated number for your defect, can notify people when a new defect is logged, and others.

Very similar to Mercury; I'm not sure if you can also create your test cases in it, I've used it only for defect tracking.

The main advantage of using Mercury or Rational DDTS is that it gives people visibility on the defects; business and management seem to be more aware of the number, severity, and priority of the defects. Somehow an Excel spreadsheet that sits somewhere on your drive (or a shared drive) does not have the same effect.

What tool do you use for test management? What are the advantages/disadvantages of using the tool?