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Lotus Notes On iPhone/iPod Touch Not Quite Ready

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Apr 12, 2001
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IBM is clearing the air from an AP report last week that it would be introducing an iPhone/iPod Touch compatible version of Lotus Notes this week. News.com has more:

"It's not something that (is) ready to go out and market or launch," an IBM spokesperson told ZDNet Australia.
Click to expand...

IBM explains that the confusion may have been spurred by an earlier demonstration of the software. The release will be significant for corporate users interested in using the iPhone.

Article Link
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2008/01/22/lotus-notes-on-iphone-ipod-touch-not-quite-ready/
rjohnstone

rjohnstone

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Dec 28, 2007
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PHX, AZ.
We use it here at work. We're still on 6.5.5
Notes is a clunky and slow mail system.

I'll take Exchange any day.
 
bytethese

bytethese

macrumors 68030
Jun 20, 2007
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rjohnstone said:
We use it here at work. We're still on 6.5.5
Notes is a clunky and slow mail system.

I'll take Exchange any day.
Click to expand...

I'd rather have Notes anyday than chase down viruses, malware and exploits anyday. :)

I've been using/supporting Notes for a decade and it's WAY better than my short stint administering Exchange. :)
 
P

penguy

macrumors 6502
Feb 20, 2007
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CA
we still use 6.5 here at work...and I would love to get away from it. But if my iPhone can be made to work with it, some of my problems would be reduced! fingers crossed!
 
bacaramac

bacaramac

macrumors 65816
Dec 29, 2007
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I'm just hoping I can at least sync my mail and cal to iPhone even if I can't get real time mail updates (since company does not support outside of Blackberry). We are on 6.5 Lotus Notes.
 
longofest

longofest

Editor emeritus
Jul 10, 2003
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rjohnstone said:
We use it here at work. We're still on 6.5.5
Notes is a clunky and slow mail system.

I'll take Exchange any day.
Click to expand...

At my work, we just migrated from Notes 6.5 to Outlook/Exchange.

I can't tell you how much we all want Notes back. There were so many things that we took for granted, such as the database functionality, that just isn't there in Exchange.
 
rjohnstone

rjohnstone

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Dec 28, 2007
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longofest said:
At my work, we just migrated from Notes 6.5 to Outlook/Exchange.

I can't tell you how much we all want Notes back. There were so many things that we took for granted, such as the database functionality, that just isn't there in Exchange.
Click to expand...
I assume you are referring to Notes based or more properly, Domino based applications?
I prefer to keep my email and my applications separate.
The Notes client is already slow enough.

@bytethese Notes is just as vulnerable. We have had our fair share of trojan and virus attacks come through Notes email.

Have either of you seen the Notes 8 betas... one word... JAVA.
You thought it was slow and clunky before. It's terrible.

We have IBM support in house and they still can't manage to get Notes 7 implemented and stable.
 
D

deadkenny

macrumors regular
Jun 25, 2006
129
0
I was hoping for Notes integration into the iPhone such that Mail, AdressBook and iCal on the iPhone would be able to use the Domino Server or at least sync with my Notes on my PC.
I dislike the thought of having a dedicated Notes client on my iPhone that won't integrate with the Apps Apple is shipping.
However the inability to use Notes is the main reason why I havn't got an iPhone yet.
 
O

oberonx

macrumors newbie
Nov 4, 2007
6
0
Symphony?

Does anyone know what's the situation for the Lotus Symphony port to Mac which was rumoured to being released at the same time as Notes for the Ipod/Iphone?
 
I

iNewbie

macrumors regular
Aug 25, 2006
129
1
rjohnstone said:
I assume you are referring to Notes based or more properly, Domino based applications?
I prefer to keep my email and my applications separate.
The Notes client is already slow enough.

@bytethese Notes is just as vulnerable. We have had our fair share of trojan and virus attacks come through Notes email.

Have either of you seen the Notes 8 betas... one word... JAVA.
You thought it was slow and clunky before. It's terrible.

We have IBM support in house and they still can't manage to get Notes 7 implemented and stable.
Click to expand...

Notes in itself is not very vulnerable to virus's. It's a lot like apple vs. windows... Notes can PASS virus but does not get infected by them.

I don't know why you bring up notes 8 beta. The final product has been out for almost a year I think.... By definition a beta is usually slower.

We don't have IBM support in house for our Notes environment, but it's rock solid. It just doesn't go down...

I hope you get some better support in the future.
 
rjohnstone

rjohnstone

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Dec 28, 2007
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iNewbie said:
Notes in itself is not very vulnerable to virus's. It's a lot like apple vs. windows... Notes can PASS virus but does not get infected by them.

I don't know why you bring up notes 8 beta. The final product has been out for almost a year I think.... By definition a beta is usually slower.

We don't have IBM support in house for our Notes environment, but it's rock solid. It just doesn't go down...

I hope you get some better support in the future.
Click to expand...
I only bring up the beta as it was the last time we even looked at it.
Dropping Domino and utilizing a DB2 back end for Notes looked promising, but the client performance was terrible. The decision to go with a JAVA based client put the nail in the coffin.
We have over 180,000 mailboxes distributed around the world.
There are more than 1,200 servers in this global setup and 100's of terabytes of SAN being eaten up by Notes inefficient storage and distribution methods of mail messages and their attachments.
On an average week, we will lose a dozen email servers because Domino failed or SAN space simply ran out. Redundancy and fail over in Notes flat out doesn't work.
We've resorted to having attachments automatically stripped from all replied emails and having users mail files limited to 250 MB on the server.
Their local copy can be as large as they want, but it negates the ability to work on more than one PC.

We pay IBM to manage these for us. They simply cannot handle the volume. Hell, they just finished getting 6.5.5 rolled out. It only took them 3 years to do it.

I'm not at liberty to discuss who I work for, but we are one of the largest clients IBM has. We use everything from Notes to Web Sphere, DB2, MQ, etc...
We're already dropping Web Sphere and Notes is on the chopping block as well. Some die hards up top want to keep it around, but reality is setting in that we need to look elsewhere.
Exchange with it's AD integration and portability are one of the key factors.
That and it's method of managing messages and attachments is superior to Notes.

As with all things, our decisions are based on our perceptions and experience with the product.
YMMV
 
I

iNewbie

macrumors regular
Aug 25, 2006
129
1
rjohnstone said:
I only bring up the beta as it was the last time we even looked at it.
Dropping Domino and utilizing a DB2 back end for Notes looked promising, but the client performance was terrible. The decision to go with a JAVA based client put the nail in the coffin.
We have over 180,000 mailboxes distributed around the world.
There are more than 1,200 servers in this global setup and 100's of terabytes of SAN being eaten up by Notes inefficient storage and distribution methods of mail messages and their attachments.
On an average week, we will lose a dozen email servers because Domino failed or SAN space simply ran out. Redundancy and fail over in Notes flat out doesn't work.
We've resorted to having attachments automatically stripped from all replied emails and having users mail files limited to 250 MB on the server.
Their local copy can be as large as they want, but it negates the ability to work on more than one PC.

We pay IBM to manage these for us. They simply cannot handle the volume. Hell, they just finished getting 6.5.5 rolled out. It only took them 3 years to do it.

I'm not at liberty to discuss who I work for, but we are one of the largest clients IBM has. We use everything from Notes to Web Sphere, DB2, MQ, etc...
We're already dropping Web Sphere and Notes is on the chopping block as well. Some die hards up top want to keep it around, but reality is setting in that we need to look elsewhere.
Exchange with it's AD integration and portability are one of the key factors.
That and it's method of managing messages and attachments is superior to Notes.

As with all things, our decisions are based on our perceptions and experience with the product.
YMMV
Click to expand...


Well, assuming you're being serious about what you say, and there are a lot of unreasonable "Notes Bashers" our there who don't like to have an actual discussion... But assuming you're not in that group then something seems really really off..

You're averaging 150 users per mail server... That's just crazy. A typical domino server, even on "obsolete" hardware can support many more users then that.

I don't know why you'd run out of space if your enforcing quota's on your mail file. That doesn't make sense. Quota's should have prevented any space problems by itself.

I don't know anything about WebSphere and hope I never have to. I've got no interest in that product. I'm not sure what you mean by Exchange having better portability. I don't think anything is better then Notes. Domino (server) and Notes (client) both run on many different platforms. You can replicate a database to any server or client on any platform. So you can always have your data available. I don't know how you get more portable then that.

Regarding r8 the eclipse based version used Java with Notes as a plug in more or less, but there's still the standard version that is not based on Java. It's the same as it ever was with just a few less features then the "enhanced" version.

Notes should be more reliable then what you're experiencing. I don't know what IBM support you have but it might benefit you to bring someone else in. There's a number of top consultants in Notes, many of them are in Orlando this week. I know some of them administer larger environments then yours.

Good Luck
 
bytethese

bytethese

macrumors 68030
Jun 20, 2007
2,707
120
rjohnstone said:
I assume you are referring to Notes based or more properly, Domino based applications?
I prefer to keep my email and my applications separate.
The Notes client is already slow enough.

@bytethese Notes is just as vulnerable. We have had our fair share of trojan and virus attacks come through Notes email.

Have either of you seen the Notes 8 betas... one word... JAVA.
You thought it was slow and clunky before. It's terrible.

We have IBM support in house and they still can't manage to get Notes 7 implemented and stable.
Click to expand...

Notes isn't as vulnerable at all. :) I've been working with it/supporting it for a decade (holy crap I feel old now) and of the waves of worm/virus infections that hit most organizations through the years, the ones with Lotus/Domino have not been impacted. Domino can still pass along a trojan and a user still needs to click on it. Domino itself is not as easily exploited as Exchange is. :) I read somewhere where the person compared apples (Exchange) to the whole produce section (Domino)...

I haven't seen the betas yet, no. But clunky and slow? Isn't it beta software? Needs more testing to tweak and fine tune? :)
 
I

iNewbie

macrumors regular
Aug 25, 2006
129
1
oberonx said:
Does anyone know what's the situation for the Lotus Symphony port to Mac which was rumoured to being released at the same time as Notes for the Ipod/Iphone?
Click to expand...

I think at Lotusphere they said Symphony would be available for OSX (and Linux) with notes 8.5 which is due this year. I would guess December.

Once 8.5 hits then the clients should always be released at the same time.
 
rjohnstone

rjohnstone

macrumors 68040
Dec 28, 2007
3,896
4,493
PHX, AZ.
iNewbie said:
Well, assuming you're being serious about what you say, and there are a lot of unreasonable "Notes Bashers" our there who don't like to have an actual discussion... But assuming you're not in that group then something seems really really off..

You're averaging 150 users per mail server... That's just crazy. A typical domino server, even on "obsolete" hardware can support many more users then that.

I don't know why you'd run out of space if your enforcing quota's on your mail file. That doesn't make sense. Quota's should have prevented any space problems by itself.

I don't know anything about WebSphere and hope I never have to. I've got no interest in that product. I'm not sure what you mean by Exchange having better portability. I don't think anything is better then Notes. Domino (server) and Notes (client) both run on many different platforms. You can replicate a database to any server or client on any platform. So you can always have your data available. I don't know how you get more portable then that.

Regarding r8 the eclipse based version used Java with Notes as a plug in more or less, but there's still the standard version that is not based on Java. It's the same as it ever was with just a few less features then the "enhanced" version.

Notes should be more reliable then what you're experiencing. I don't know what IBM support you have but it might benefit you to bring someone else in. There's a number of top consultants in Notes, many of them are in Orlando this week. I know some of them administer larger environments then yours.

Good Luck
Click to expand...
No, not all our Notes servers are used to host mail files.
We have a lot of them being used strictly as Notes based application servers.
SR systems, project tracking and such.
Our actual mail servers host roughly 1000 +/- mail boxes each.

The mail file size limits were only recently introduced because they were getting out of hand.

The Exchange portability was in reference to the integration with AD and the lack of the need for an ID file to retrieve your email. Log into any systems with an Exchange client and you can check your email.

We now enforce local replicas, which make putting your ID file on a USB thumb drive and hitting your email from another systems all but impossible.
That is unless you like dragging a copy of your mail file. notes.ini file(only needed if you have specific servers you need to use) and desktop file along with you on your thumb drive. I've had to do it before... it sucks.

As for Web Sphere, if you're ever presented with it as an option, choose something else.
Very bloated and tons of overhead required to make it work properly.
We've been using it since the early days and we have finally had enough and are dropping it. We could never get it to handle the kind of capacity we needed to run our web based programs.

I'm not against the use of JAVA, however IBM's decision to use it heavily in the newer version of Notes was not a smart choice. Great if you use *nix based desktops, but we live in the real world and have Windows based desktops of one flavor or another that use AD for authenticating to all of our systems. We all know how Windows systems just love JAVA. :rolleyes:

We're however going to Sun and lightweight JAVA as our Web Sphere replacement. Those are all Sun systems anyway, so it makes perfect sense.

Again, I cannot say who I work for publicly as I will get in a load of trouble.
Yes, they do monitor our activity on the web and know that I'm posting here. As long as I don't get specific, they are cool with it.
Understanding the nature of my business would make you go "ah I get it".
 
I

iNewbie

macrumors regular
Aug 25, 2006
129
1
rjohnstone said:
No, not all our Notes servers are used to host mail files.
We have a lot of them being used strictly as Notes based application servers.
SR systems, project tracking and such.
Our actual mail servers host roughly 1000 +/- mail boxes each.

The mail file size limits were only recently introduced because they were getting out of hand.

The Exchange portability was in reference to the integration with AD and the lack of the need for an ID file to retrieve your email. Log into any systems with an Exchange client and you can check your email.

We now enforce local replicas, which make putting your ID file on a USB thumb drive and hitting your email from another systems all but impossible.
That is unless you like dragging a copy of your mail file. notes.ini file(only needed if you have specific servers you need to use) and desktop file along with you on your thumb drive. I've had to do it before... it sucks.

As for Web Sphere, if you're ever presented with it as an option, choose something else.
Very bloated and tons of overhead required to make it work properly.
We've been using it since the early days and we have finally had enough and are dropping it. We could never get it to handle the kind of capacity we needed to run our web based programs.

I'm not against the use of JAVA, however IBM's decision to use it heavily in the newer version of Notes was not a smart choice. Great if you use *nix based desktops, but we live in the real world and have Windows based desktops of one flavor or another that use AD for authenticating to all of our systems. We all know how Windows systems just love JAVA. :rolleyes:

We're however going to Sun and lightweight JAVA as our Web Sphere replacement. Those are all Sun systems anyway, so it makes perfect sense.

Again, I cannot say who I work for publicly as I will get in a load of trouble.
Yes, they do monitor our activity on the web and know that I'm posting here. As long as I don't get specific, they are cool with it.
Understanding the nature of my business would make you go "ah I get it".
Click to expand...

Well forgetting about who you work for... and the fact that I'm not a true administrator...

Notes Did introduce roaming which should do what you're looking to do... I'm not sure how you enforce using a local replica in notes, but you might have something else in play...

You can get to your notes mail from the client, DWA, outlook, or a host of other applications, so there are lots of options...

All I can say is that in my experience, both first hand and word of mouth.. Notes/Domino is rock solid... Period. If that's not what you're seeing then you're not talking to the right people or something isn't setup correct...

Sorry you're having problems with it!
 
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