Lotus Notes To Receive Better Mac Support

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com)

Lotus Notes, a high-visibility enterprise class communications suite by IBM, will receive improved Macintosh support (http://www.crn.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193100334) according to Mike Rhodin, general manager of IBM's Lotus group speaking to CRN.

"We have millions of Notes seats on the Mac now, and some very large customers are active in the beta and are very vocal about that," Rhodin said in an interview with CRN. "The Mac is a resurgent platform."

In addition, the next release will receive iNotes compatibility for Macs. Sametime 7.5 (http://www.crn.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193000335), IBM's enterprise instant messaging solution (including VoIP support) also includes Macintosh client support.

Many in the Mac community have been wondering whether Apple's Intel switch would bring forth increased interest from enterprise customers. Rhodin's comments can't be taken to represent the entire enterprise Mac market of course, but they can represent an interesting insight into how well the Mac version of a product that is used by government and many large corporations is doing.

[gauchogolfer]

People still use LotusNotes?

My wife uses it at her work, and I've been contemplating working there as well. Maybe this will eliminate a barrier to bringing my Powerbook to a Windows-centric business :)

[KindredMAC]

We use Lotus Notes at my company also. This is great news. Notes has a couple small but still annoying bugs on the Mac.

I was surprised to find out how many companies in our city use Notes. I had never heard of it before I started using it. I was used to Entourage and Outlook before that.

[Bibulous]

"The Mac is a resurgent platform."


If only their hardware people had felt that way... :(

[bjdku]

This is fantastic news! I am stunned! Yes a lot of large enterprises and non-profits use Lotus Notes...it is more pervasive than you would think, and if IBM are taking notice of a increasing demand, I am drooling at the mouth to start marketing Mac computers to my clients!

"Be like the big dogs, get a mac!"

[x704]

indeed this is good for apple...
I still want a CAM program for the mac. Currently there is none available on the mac platform. If apple computers are getting corporate attention then a CAM might be closer then I think among other things that could use better support.

[twoodcc]

good news.*

the more support for apple, the better

[jellomizer]

While I am not a big fan of Lotus Notes, It normally causes more problems then it solves. But a lot of companies use it and some swayer by it, I swayer at it. But giving companies with Lotus notes a choice in alternate platforms to move to, is a good thing. Worst case senerio is that a company who still wants to stay on windows, can go to microsoft/dell... and say well Apple can give me this what can you do better?

[ifjake]

"The Mac is a resurgent platform."

sweet.

For a while I was thinking that the only dent Apple could make was primarily in the individual consumer market. But this news along with checking out some of the new upcoming features for Leopard server makes me change my mind. 2007 and all it will bring to the Mac platform will be an interesting year for sure.

[840quadra]

If only their hardware people had felt that way... :(
Indeed!

< Looks at PowerMac G5 >

< Cries >

:o

Oh well I guess a Pro Mac is going to have to be in the cards for 07

[Rocketman]

This really hits a nerve with me. This example of Lotus notes which at one time was a new application which was NOT written to work well with BOTH Macs and DOStel PC's was a CHOICE. They wanted for a variety of reasons to deal with only one set of hardware even though there was deployed hardware in use with users who would at least in principal, need to be on their network.

As the years passed with Notes, they begrudgingly made some versions with limited Mac support, but always as a second class citizen to such a degree that unless you ran it on a DOStel PC or a Wintel PC an employer could not practicably talk with them to the drgree they needed to.

As a result of this and the fairly wide adoption of Notes for secure communication within several large enterprises, Macs were shut out.

Now that Notes is adding "more full" Mac support 20 years later, they will not be surprised to hear Mac users, and shops who respect Mac users have simply switched to something else.

Hopefully what will happen now is their captured markets will simply buy APPLE hardware to perform Dostel and Wintel PC functions under Parallels or Bootcamp or Q.

It will be ritious.

Rocketman

[iNewbie]

Lotus Notes is a great program when it's implemented correctly. We've been using it over 10 years now and there's still nothing out there that can touch it.

Improved support on the Apple is a good thing. They are even improving the client on Linux as well. That will really give people the potential to move away from windows.

[DCBass]

This is nice to know. I use Lotus Notes at my work on Windows. It's decent enough, but I hope that with this new version the online experience with accessing my work email remotely with my mac improves. As it is right now, it's basically unusable.

DCBass

[mdntcallr]

excellent news. as more and more business software is on the MAC OS. The better the future for macs.

[kingtj]

This is definitely good news. I had friends in corporate I.T. where they did a massive migration from Notes to Exchange/Outlook (mostly due to Microsoft salespeople's slick talking and giving strategic gifts to the right people) -- and the environment suffered.

Notes has its bugs and issues, but it also has some flexibility that Exchange/Outlook doesn't offer.



Lotus Notes is a great program when it's implemented correctly. We've been using it over 10 years now and there's still nothing out there that can touch it.

Improved support on the Apple is a good thing. They are even improving the client on Linux as well. That will really give people the potential to move away from windows.

[h00ligan]

LOL

a highly visible enterprise app.. pfft..

notes is a pile of ****, the only people using it still are those way behind the curve of other good groupware apps.

[bigandy]

LOL

a highly visible enterprise app.. pfft..

notes is a pile of ****, the only people using it still are those way behind the curve of other good groupware apps.

actually there are some big companies using it, and finding it fine for what they need. Prudential PLC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prudential_plc), in the UK (a large financial company) is one example.

[macrlz9]

I use Lotus Notes and Sametime at my job.... unfortunately i have to use a Dell at work :-/

[RedTomato]

Like most of you, my knowledge of Notes is about 10 years out of date, so I had a look at the wikithing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Notes

Hmm, interesting read. Seems lots of updates recently. Gone from 43 million to 120 million users in the last few years. Quite impressive database based multi-channel document handling and communication app. Useful replication of databases so that work can be done offline, and updated when next online.

Lots of gotchas tho, see the criticisms in the article. Notable that they only implemented a number-of-unread-emails count in the 2003 edition. :eek:

[MattG]

FANTASTIC news. As big a pile of crap as Notes/Domino is, I'm stuck with it at work, and being the lone Mac dude just makes things worse. Notes on the Mac platform is sorry right now, and some improvements would be much appreciated.

I'd love to some day see Domino Administrator ported to Mac.

[agentkow]

Am I ever glad to hear this. I just got a Mac Pro at the college I work at and am forced to use Lotus Notes, and besides being crappy, ugly and slow, it doesn't even support scroll wheels!

I managed to hack Mail.app a little bit to access and sort my email through IMAP, but since there is no official support or server to send from, that option is out the window.

Suprised no one has referred to it as Blotus Notes yet...

[dcv]

Just a shame there's still no Domino Designer or Admin clients available on the Mac platform.

[redAPPLE]

there is still lotus notes? unbelievable. i know people use it. but i thought they are still using the outdated version.

[russed]

where i have just started work (Grant Thornton) we use it, its a refreshing change to see Outlook not being used. it seems quite nice so far but then again it also feels relativly slow and some parts are rather 'comical' like the headers that you can put on your emails (or memos as called in notes), but all in all seems quite good and imporeved mac support is never a bad thing!

[zwida]

there is still lotus notes? unbelievable. i know people use it. but i thought they are still using the outdated version.

A friend of mine who works at IBM grouses about having to use Lotus Notes. I didn't imagine anyone used it that didn't have to.

Maybe it's just IBM and Grant Thornton.;)

[portent]

Both Notes and GroupWise have better Mac support than Microsoft offers through Entourage. And for free.

None of the three (Lotus Notes, Novell GroupWise, or Microsoft Exchange/Outlook/Entourage) offers the same level of support for the Mac as they do with Windows. The clients are always more limited and often buggy. But Entourage is the least capable and most expensive mail/collaboration program by far.

I'm all for the new Notes client, and I wish Lotus nothing but success.

[kondspi]

People still use LOTUS???!!!!???

[Prom1]

Yes ppl still use Notes.
> for the price its cheaper than MS Exchange. And isnt limited to 50K accounts (for email that is. Without additions/packs).

Sametime 7.5 just went GOLD+ for the past few weeks. Its interface looks pretty good and the ability to keep the history in a chat for INDIVIDUAL ppl that participated - for a limited time pre set by the user, or indefinately. But its STILL buggy, crashing on end on multiple machines (WinXP SP2) without a cause; that we can figure out.

BTW; I work at IBM here in Toronto for their client BNSF.

This should be interesting to see how Apple rolls with this announcement.

[dernhelm]

My last exposure to Notes was 12 yrs ago. We hated it. After 5 yrs, my then company decided to move to Exchange to much hype that it would be a lot better.

It wasn't. I still miss the days of Notes. I've since moved on to two different companies, each of whom have used Exchange. Not once has the Exchange implementation been any better than I remember Notes being more than 7 years previous.

But I will face facts. Notes lost the battle - it is a dead platform for all intents and purposes. As went 1-2-3, so went Notes. It's a shame really because Exchange/Outlook is so terrible, that you'd think anyone with a modicrum of experience could trump it without even trying really hard.

I mean, really, do you need 80% of one of my CPU cores to look up a name in an address book? And how large does the memory footprint of an e-mail app need to be? I often have to shut down Outlook just so compiles will complete in less time. But that will never get better now, because there is no one to push them.

[xPismo]

yay! Anything that makes my powerbook more useful in the work environment is a good thing. :cool:

[sonicboom]

Who gives a rats butt about Lotus Notes?
Keep it on OS/2 Warp.

[Prom1]

My last exposure to Notes was 12 yrs ago. We hated it. After 5 yrs, my then company decided to move to Exchange to much hype that it would be a lot better.

It wasn't. I still miss the days of Notes. I've since moved on to two different companies, each of whom have used Exchange. Not once has the Exchange implementation been any better than I remember Notes being more than 7 years previous.

But I will face facts. Notes lost the battle - it is a dead platform for all intents and purposes. As went 1-2-3, so went Notes. It's a shame really because Exchange/Outlook is so terrible, that you'd think anyone with a modicrum of experience could trump it without even trying really hard.

I mean, really, do you need 80% of one of my CPU cores to look up a name in an address book? And how large does the memory footprint of an e-mail app need to be? I often have to shut down Outlook just so compiles will complete in less time. But that will never get better now, because there is no one to push them.

Well said. Maybe its time freeware communities such as OpenOffice make a HUGE push of functionality, portability, efficiency, and ability to work with Active Directory & Such to challenge MS.

[gkhaldi]

Finally. I was waiting on this news since 2004 !!

Looking forward to see the new version(s)

[gkhaldi]

Who gives a rats butt about Lotus Notes?
Keep it on OS/2 Warp.

Those people on whom Apple will have to rely on in the future for buying their products.

I'm pretty sure that the move to the Intel platform was mere than availibility of a power5 portable. Apple really wants to push forward in the corporate market and needs enterprise apps like Notes.

So in short, I'm one of those who gives. :mad:

[Kelmon]

Well, it would have been nice but my company (delivers packages, owns Memphis) switched to Exchange about a year ago, mostly because Notes was too damned expensive. Oh well.

For those of you still working in organisations using Lotus Notes, I guess this is good news.

[russed]

Maybe it's just IBM and Grant Thornton.;)

no i have thought of another company - my girlfriend starts at the John Lewis Partnership on monday and they use it also! - 3 companies and counting!

[dcv]

:rolleyes: ...along with many investment banks, accountancy firms, law firms, consultancies...

[csect]

Yeh, we use Notes at work too. Most every week we have to replace 3 ".dat" files or the thing won't even start up. But, then, it's not running on a Mac.

I'd love to see a list of big companies (in NYC) that use Macs. Really! :D

[Dalriada]

Really great news... can't wait to run iNotes from home for office access rather than using that old webmail interface.... :D

[iJed]

I suppose this is a good thing but it doesn't stop the Notes client being one of the most terrible software packages that I've ever had the misfortune to endure.

In my department I have managed to kill off this crap for its dreadful document management capabilities and have migrated us to using MediaWiki. Its amazing how much better documentation has become since this change.

[nwainwright]

Hi there,

I've been a Mac user since '84 and a Notes user since '93. I also am a Notes developer and I've led dozens of Notes implementations. It's a great platform if it's done well. The biggest achilles heel has been their user interface (on any platform), and they're set to fix that (for the most part) in the next 12 months.

The Notes Mac client hasn't always been the best. Well, never the best but it's been usable and they should be applauded for their long-standing support of the Mac platform. One of the key execs at their development team, Tim Halvorsen, was a key Mac supporter over the years (he's not there now).

The movement of OS X to a robust set of development tools, coupled with the maturity of software development practices in general across the software industry, means that full and exciting support of OS X alongside Windows is now a lot easier than it has ever been...meaning Macs will be making more inroads into enterprise accounts.

I applaud IBM's support of OS X and I only see things accelerating.

By the way...shops with Notes deployed well tend to be just as passionate about Notes and some of us can be about Macs. :-)

...Neil

[YS2003]

Like many other mid-sized and large companies, my current company also uses Lotus Notes. One of the features I like about Notes is address search. I can partially type in the name of my colleague and Notes retrieves the rest of the name (without me creating the address book). It gets awefully slow after the local server (meaning, the notebook's internal HD) reaches 1 GB data (for email); So, I had to create new local every 1 GB.

The Mac support for Notes would be good as that might open up a possibility my current employer's IT department might allow MBP for a company-issued notebook. As of now, it is all Dell.

Now that Notes will become more Mac friendly, the only other obstacle would be using AS400 database via Ramba.

[Tommy Wasabi]

God I hate Notes- it's an operating system on top of an operating system. It's databases are just a step up from Access and to be honest - it's a pig.

I've been forced to use the piece a crap for over 5 years (I'm a consultant) and it had brought me great pleasure to help large scale enterprises move away from this overstuffed piece of crap.

Is Exchange any better - yes and no - in general they both are crappy. The biggest advantage of Notes is that their CALs (licenses) are so cheep compared to Exchange/Outlook.

When I start looking for a new job - the first question I'll ask is which Universal Messaging Platform have you deployed in your Enterprise? If they answer "Notes" I'll know the following about their organziation:

1. They care more about the dollar than about usability and employee satisfaction
2. The VP of IT is probably sleeping with the IBM rep
3. The business only uses it because they don't know any better (they've been there too long and have never used anything other than Notes and AOL).
4. They think that Notes databases are cool and hip and truly believe Access is an enterprise level database
5. And finally, they are so damn stupid they probably have Lotus 123 and Word Perfect as their "Office Suite"

"Save me lord from these fools"

[eRondeau]

I too am forced to use Lotus Notes at work. Maybe it hasn't been "implemented properly" in my office, but it is a horrible, awful thing. Even common commands are hidden deep inside nondescript menus and any attempt at customizing anything ends with frustration. I would hope that this bloated piece of software crap stays far, far away from the Mac platform forever.

[dernhelm]

Well said. Maybe its time freeware communities such as OpenOffice make a HUGE push of functionality, portability, efficiency, and ability to work with Active Directory & Such to challenge MS.

I thought about that as I wrote it. The main problem is that any application that matters will need to interoperate seamlessly with outlook clients and other exchange servers. It has got to deal with appointments, resources, etc, exactly the same way Outlook does. Since the details of all that is built on a closed platform, it won't be easy. You can try to compensate by interoperating with the open portions of Active Directory, but that wouldn't really be enough.

That said, I really don't think it would be hard to outperform Exchange/Outlook, and you could provide similar functionality in a different way, but the real problem is interoperating.

[sfwalter]

Lotus Notes is such a horrible product for an email client. Notes existed long before they added email capabilities, and then they retrofitted email into the product.

I like to use an email product where I can get access to all my email accounts (both personal and work related). Luckily in Notes you can have it forward your email to another email client. So I read my Notes mail in Apple's Mail client.

I'm not bitter :)

[valiar]

I, for one, see nothing great in that news.
Why?
Lotus Notes should simply go away. Forever. It is *that* horrible. :mad:
I know that I will get the usual canned response here from Notes fans ("but, you see, it is not just an email app, it is so much more...").
However, the client interface on Windows is beyond unusable (it is a horrible, terrible mess). It sucks as an email client. And it sucks as a database.
I have been forced to use it in my previous job, and I hated every minute of it.
By the way, I also did development on it... So i do know about all possible bells and whistles.
It is still horrible.

[sl8r]

i, too, am firmly in the "Notes Haters" camp.


I know that I will get the usual canned response here from Notes fans ("but, you see, it is not just an email app, it is so much more...").

Yeah, they're probably the worst fanboys in the IT industry; "But it can do so much!" yes well if it can do so much, why is it the crashtastic pile of ***** that it is today? If it crashes on you, you have to reboot the PC, cos just trying to start Lotus Notes again will give you a cryptic error message.

The user interface is the worst ever ("click that little unmarked rectangle top-left in the mail view to check for new mail!", and, oh, about 10'000 other possible examples of UI idiocy).

The last two jobs I've held have forced me to use this decades-past-it's-heyday trainwreck, and even though I've used it in various incarnations (~R4-R6 and whatever the latest public version is), I would love to know what the people at IBM were and still are smoking. Shouldn't you fix glaringly obvious bugs, from release to release? Do they even employ UI designers at IBM? Do they actually consider things such as optimizing performance, when rolling out a new release?

As far as I can see, the sole reason it still exists, apart from the fact that you can send and receive emails and do scheduling with it (which are the two things most companies use it for today), seems to stem from the veritable ARMIES of consultants and developers that keep on recommending it, ostensibly to protect their own incomes after having spent thousands learning how to develop applications for it.

[Tommy Wasabi]

If there is any silver lining in any of this...

The guy that actually created Notes for Lotus (and then IBM) is now the CTO of Microsoft.

Sniff, sniff - yup I smell more crap coming from Microsoft. They are making this too easy.

[Scottyman]

@RedTomato: Being able to switch them off at the database level is new though

[SPUY767]

Well said. Maybe its time freeware communities such as OpenOffice make a HUGE push of functionality, portability, efficiency, and ability to work with Active Directory & Such to challenge MS.

I've talked to an Opensource Guru, and he says that about 30% of AD updates are designed to foil Samba compatibility.

[SPUY767]

God I hate Notes- it's an operating system on top of an operating system. It's databases are just a step up from Access and to be honest - it's a pig.

I've been forced to use the piece a crap for over 5 years (I'm a consultant) and it had brought me great pleasure to help large scale enterprises move away from this overstuffed piece of crap.

Is Exchange any better - yes and no - in general they both are crappy. The biggest advantage of Notes is that their CALs (licenses) are so cheep compared to Exchange/Outlook.

When I start looking for a new job - the first question I'll ask is which Universal Messaging Platform have you deployed in your Enterprise? If they answer "Notes" I'll know the following about their organziation:

1. They care more about the dollar than about usability and employee satisfaction
2. The VP of IT is probably sleeping with the IBM rep
3. The business only uses it because they don't know any better (they've been there too long and have never used anything other than Notes and AOL).
4. They think that Notes databases are cool and hip and truly believe Access is an enterprise level database
5. And finally, they are so damn stupid they probably have Lotus 123 and Word Perfect as their "Office Suite"

"Save me lord from these fools"

Incredibly well thought out comments. You should pat yourself on the back. I especially enjoyed this gem:

3. The business only uses it because they don't know any better (they've been there too long and have never used anything other than Notes and AOL).

That embodies ignorance. It is in fact, just the opposite, more companies use exchange because it's already there and they don't know any better, not to mention that MS practically forces you to use it and they attempt to make it so easy that a baboon could set it up. Notes is good if implemented properly, better than exchange for what it's designed for. I have a feeling you just wanted to flame, so I'm just going to ignore you from now on.

Toodles.

[iNewbie]

God I hate Notes- it's an operating system on top of an operating system. It's databases are just a step up from Access and to be honest - it's a pig.

I've been forced to use the piece a crap for over 5 years (I'm a consultant) and it had brought me great pleasure to help large scale enterprises move away from this overstuffed piece of crap.

Is Exchange any better - yes and no - in general they both are crappy. The biggest advantage of Notes is that their CALs (licenses) are so cheep compared to Exchange/Outlook.

When I start looking for a new job - the first question I'll ask is which Universal Messaging Platform have you deployed in your Enterprise? If they answer "Notes" I'll know the following about their organziation:

1. They care more about the dollar than about usability and employee satisfaction
2. The VP of IT is probably sleeping with the IBM rep
3. The business only uses it because they don't know any better (they've been there too long and have never used anything other than Notes and AOL).
4. They think that Notes databases are cool and hip and truly believe Access is an enterprise level database
5. And finally, they are so damn stupid they probably have Lotus 123 and Word Perfect as their "Office Suite"

"Save me lord from these fools"

You seem to be contradicting yourself here... You say you hate notes.. But suggest it's "equally" as crappy as Exchange.. Then you admit that the CAL's are actually cheaper then Exchange... From your reasoning it would seem that makes notes better by itself. Your listed items are meaningless so I won't address them..

Some advantages to Notes....

the server runs on many platforms (Windows, Linux. iSeries, etc...)
The client runs on many platforms (windows, linux, mac) or you can just use a browser...
REPLICATION... Say it again. REPLICATION.. What does this mean? You can replicate a database to other servers or desktops/laptops. That's really nice to have if something happens to your hardware... It's not clustering - Notes has that too... So the same database can be on many servers if need be or you can take it locally and work with it off-line.. I don't know a microsoft technology that would let someone take a CRM application on the road.. make updates to the data while off line and put it back on the server later.. And it doesn't matter if it's one person or 100 people doing this. Maybe Sharepoint can kinda do this now - I truly don't know - But notes has been doing this for over 15 years... Not bad..

That's just a couple advantages..

Oh one more thing...;)

It's nice getting new versions of the server on a regular basis that actually improve performance on existing hardware. What's Microsoft do? force Exchange users to 64 bit servers....

It takes us longer to download a server update then it does to install it.

[MattG]

You seem to be contradicting yourself here... You say you hate notes.. But suggest it's "equally" as crappy as Exchange.. Then you admit that the CAL's are actually cheaper then Exchange... From your reasoning it would seem that makes notes better by itself. Your listed items are meaningless so I won't address them..

Some advantages to Notes....

the server runs on many platforms (Windows, Linux. iSeries, etc...)
The client runs on many platforms (windows, linux, mac) or you can just use a browser...
REPLICATION... Say it again. REPLICATION.. What does this mean? You can replicate a database to other servers or desktops/laptops. That's really nice to have if something happens to your hardware... It's not clustering - Notes has that too... So the same database can be on many servers if need be or you can take it locally and work with it off-line.. I don't know a microsoft technology that would let someone take a CRM application on the road.. make updates to the data while off line and put it back on the server later.. And it doesn't matter if it's one person or 100 people doing this. Maybe Sharepoint can kinda do this now - I truly don't know - But notes has been doing this for over 15 years... Not bad..

That's just a couple advantages..

Oh one more thing...;)

It's nice getting new versions of the server on a regular basis that actually improve performance on existing hardware. What's Microsoft do? force Exchange users to 64 bit servers....

It takes us longer to download a server update then it does to install it.

I agree that Domino holds many advantages over MS. My complaints are mostly regarding the Notes user interface. It's crap, plain and simple, even on the MS platform. It's just really flakey. Not a day goes by when Notes doesn't crash on at least one of the desktops I'm working on, Mac or PC. it's just really annoying to work with.

[slackersonly]

good idea / bad idea (see animaniacs)

good idea: anything that will allow me to get a mac for work is great.

bad idea: anything that will keep me using the notes interface is anti-great.

[NoNothing]

This is similar to how I feel about Exchange/Outlook. Companies want to use Exchange only because it is one stop shopping for IT. In a corporate environment, Exchange is so inadequate as to be laughable. This is from a user stand point. It message/email tracking are simply pathetic IMO. It really feels like it is a personal email system forced to live in a corporate environment.

I have used Notes extensively as a database platform and have been dually impressed with what it can do. In one case, it was a bug/change tracking system and the implementation of the database was simply sweet. I have never heavily used the email system but going from Groupwise to Exchange was a shock in just how bad Exchange was.

Steven

When I start looking for a new job - the first question I'll ask is which Universal Messaging Platform have you deployed in your Enterprise? If they answer "Notes" I'll know the following about their organziation:

1. They care more about the dollar than about usability and employee satisfaction
2. The VP of IT is probably sleeping with the IBM rep
3. The business only uses it because they don't know any better (they've been there too long and have never used anything other than Notes and AOL).
4. They think that Notes databases are cool and hip and truly believe Access is an enterprise level database
5. And finally, they are so damn stupid they probably have Lotus 123 and Word Perfect as their "Office Suite"

"Save me lord from these fools"

[bretm]

Hopefully what will happen now is their captured markets will simply buy APPLE hardware to perform Dostel and Wintel PC functions under Parallels or Bootcamp or Q.

It will be ritious.

Rocketman

And since IBM does not manufacture personal computers I would assume they could give a darn which platform you purchase as long as you purchase Lotus notes.

[yellow]

People still use LotusNotes?

My wife uses it at her work, and I've been contemplating working there as well. Maybe this will eliminate a barrier to bringing my Powerbook to a Windows-centric business :)


I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, Lotus Notes.

The current version (available to us) is 6.55. It's carbonized and STILL has a bunch of lame pre-1998 artificial software locks built into it. It's slow, it's cumbersome, and the UI is terrible.

Another quality piece of **** brought you by the people who crapped out Tivoli.

[MattG]

Are they going to make it so the ***** "Synchronize Address Book" feature works? That's one feature that I'd like to be able to use and has NEVER worked on the Mac (you click it and it does nothing).

[Swissfondue]

I sincerely hope so. I can't even login to my company's iNotes site from my Mac because Macs are not supported (only runs with IE 6.00+).

[RedTomato]

I sincerely hope so. I can't even login to my company's iNotes site from my Mac because Macs are not supported (only runs with IE 6.00+).

slighly off-topic - have you tried Firefox on your Mac with User Agent Switcher?

Linky (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/59/)

Now returning you to your regular "Notes - hot or not?" flame war.

[JQW]

Yet another Notes hater here.

I first came across it at work in 1992 or so, back with version 2. We used it for our customer support and sales databases, and the company were still using it in 1999 when I finally left them. By then they were also developing a web-server product based on the current Notes webserver component, and re-launched the company around this product, floating the company to obtain extra venture capital. It was quite frankly the worst performing web server I'd ever seen, and the company folded when the money ran out.

As part of supporting this junk product I had to pass a Notes exam. For that I learnt how Notes mail handled multiple copies of the same large attachment within multiple mailboxes. I forget the full details, but there was a nightly process that ran through the mail database and consolidated such attachments. It was a horrible mechanism. The previous mail system I came from handled this in a far simpler way by simply using hard links.

A collegue once ran the then current Notes release under the debug version of Windows 3.1, and had never seen so many reported errors in code.

I'd also had to integrate Notes (version 4 I believe) into another E-mail sytem via a gateway at a customer. Configuring SMTP to an external source under Notes was a pain, and it took 3 'engineers' about 4 hours to try all of the combinations before we could get it to both send and receive mail.

I've come across Notes a few times since then. Still horrible.

[thunng8]

Yet another Notes hater here.

I first came across it at work in 1992 or so, back with version 2. We used it for our customer support and sales databases, and the company were still using it in 1999 when I finally left them. By then they were also developing a web-server product based on the current Notes webserver component, and re-launched the company around this product, floating the company to obtain extra venture capital. It was quite frankly the worst performing web server I'd ever seen, and the company folded when the money ran out.

As part of supporting this junk product I had to pass a Notes exam. For that I learnt how Notes mail handled multiple copies of the same large attachment within multiple mailboxes. I forget the full details, but there was a nightly process that ran through the mail database and consolidated such attachments. It was a horrible mechanism. The previous mail system I came from handled this in a far simpler way by simply using hard links.

A collegue once ran the then current Notes release under the debug version of Windows 3.1, and had never seen so many reported errors in code.

I'd also had to integrate Notes (version 4 I believe) into another E-mail sytem via a gateway at a customer. Configuring SMTP to an external source under Notes was a pain, and it took 3 'engineers' about 4 hours to try all of the combinations before we could get it to both send and receive mail.

I've come across Notes a few times since then. Still horrible.

The versions you have mentioned are from 10+ years ago. Why are you bringing this up? The Mac will get the latest version ported and I see it as a good thing. Whether you like it or not, Notes is used widely throughout many companies (over 120M "seats" worldwide) and having a modern up to date and supported version for the Mac is good.

[iNewbie]

Yet another Notes hater here.

I first came across it at work in 1992 or so, back with version 2. We used it for our customer support and sales databases, and the company were still using it in 1999 when I finally left them. By then they were also developing a web-server product based on the current Notes webserver component, and re-launched the company around this product, floating the company to obtain extra venture capital. It was quite frankly the worst performing web server I'd ever seen, and the company folded when the money ran out.

As part of supporting this junk product I had to pass a Notes exam. For that I learnt how Notes mail handled multiple copies of the same large attachment within multiple mailboxes. I forget the full details, but there was a nightly process that ran through the mail database and consolidated such attachments. It was a horrible mechanism. The previous mail system I came from handled this in a far simpler way by simply using hard links.

A collegue once ran the then current Notes release under the debug version of Windows 3.1, and had never seen so many reported errors in code.

I'd also had to integrate Notes (version 4 I believe) into another E-mail sytem via a gateway at a customer. Configuring SMTP to an external source under Notes was a pain, and it took 3 'engineers' about 4 hours to try all of the combinations before we could get it to both send and receive mail.

I've come across Notes a few times since then. Still horrible.

I just don't understand all these Notes haters and their anectodal stories.. I'm not trying to flame or argue... but only have a reasonable discussion..

You had a bad experience in 1999... Since version 5 came out in early 1999 you were likely on version 4.x. Notes has come a LONG way since then. This is like hating OSX because you had a bad experience with OS7 or System7 or whatever it was called. The webserver in those days was basically the FIRST version of it in the product. It was probably the internotes component.. you're right it probably wasn't very good back then.. The whole internet thing was jsut really taking off back then...

I haven't done much with shared mail which is what you're referencing regarding the attachments but again in the EARLY days it was something that people on notes.net said was not perfected.. Again it's a lot better now..

Notes is NOT going to cure cancer.. similar to Visual Basic it get's a bad rap because it's a RAPID APPLICATION development system. It's also easy to learn. Many Notes developers started out with no prior programming experience. As such not all notes apps in the early days were written very well. But do you know what's cool? All of those applications will still RUN on the latest version. There's no microsoft rip and replace business here. But is that really an advantage? I think so but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe companies really like to re-write existing applications because they will no longer work because Microsoft want's to do something "different"..

[phillymjs]

One of my clients is a huge, global corporation (that shall remain nameless), and they use Notes. I only support a smallish design department that uses Macs, and I quickly learned to loathe Notes.

Allow me to quote a rant I wrote about it on 10/8/02, after coming home from a long day of battling Notes issues at that client:

"Lotus Notes [6.0] for the Mac is a turd that they just keep trying to polish. Whoo hoo, it's finally Carbonized and sports the Aqua interface-- that's like putting a fresh coat of paint on an outhouse. This is the most half-assed Mac port of a Windows app since Microsoft Word 6-- scads of 8.3-named library files, a terribly unMaclike interface that is possibly the worst mangling of the 'web browser' metaphor that I have ever seen, and a complete inability to accommodate more than one user per machine, even on a multi-user based OS like Mac OS X. You'd think a company like IBM could actually assemble a team of competent Mac programmers, but judging by the quality of Notes for the Mac, they can't. Memo to IBM/Lotus: Half-assed Mac support is worse than none at all. Rebuild Notes [for the Mac] from scratch, or take it out back and shoot it. It makes Outlook/Exchange look like paradise, even with all the security and virus problems."

That client is now using 6.5.4, and I still hate it. Four years later, and it *still* wants to put the user data folder inside the Notes application folder by default when you install! Last week I ran Migration Assistant to move someone's data back to a PowerBook that had returned from being serviced, and Notes got messed up somehow. It was set to spellcheck all outgoing messages automatically, but lost the location of its dictionary. How do you think Notes would handle that? Just inform the user, "I can't spellcheck, but would you like me send out the message anyway?", right? Wrong! It wouldn't let the user send any mail at all, until I remoted in and disabled the spellcheck entirely. When I was back on site today, I had to reinstall Notes on her machine to fix it.

Which brings us to the problem of support. The only solution I can find for 99% of Notes issues on the Mac is to just reinstall the damned thing.

I could keep on going, but you get the picture.... Notes is a godawful abortion of a software program, and I would lead a much happier life if I didn't have to deal with it. IBM claims they want to improve it? Well they've certainly got their work cut out for them, don't they?

~Philly

[valiar]

To recap all the comments above...
Pretty muc everyone who actually had to *use* Notes for work hates it.
The only people who seem to be praising it are the ones who are paid to maintain it. Notice how the Notes fanbois refer to it as a "product", "platform", "solution", etc - and yet provide not a single example where the features of the client itself would make the user more happy and productive.
Yes, I said the word: User!
It's the users that matter most.
And Notes client makes any user miserable.
It is slow, it uses non-standard interface elements, and it has a really steep learning curve (even for the 'engineer' types). I am not a big fan of Outlook, but even Outlook is light years ahead of Notes.
As for the Domino server itself... That thing is just as bad as the client.
Its raison d'etre seems to be simplification of development process.
And it might have made (some limited) sense in 1995.
Not anymore.
Everything, and I mean everything, that you can do with Domino, you can do with Ruby, PHP/MySQL/PostgreSQL, WebObjects, or Java.
You can do it in less time, using highly visual dev environments. You can also easily collaborate on the development process, and systematically create concise documentation. The finished product will run fast and solid, and it won't depend on proprietary (terrible) client software. You will just need a web browser.
Domino, on the other hand, is pure garbage. I remember working in a 20 person company back in '00 where we had a Domino server running on a dual 500MHz PIII server with 2 gigs of RAM - very expensive at the time. It was very hard on the poor machine. It was choking. And the only three things the server was used for were email, very basic scheduling, and a billable hour tracking app. Not that that server is any speed demon by modern standards... But a non-Domino system having the same functionality would not have created any measurable load on the server at all with only 20 users. Did I also mention the server was less than stable? And I still remember how SP6 for NT completely brought the damn thing down... Ouch.

[MattG]

To recap all the comments above...
Pretty muc everyone who actually had to *use* Notes for work hates it.
The only people who seem to be praising it are the ones who are paid to maintain it. Notice how the Notes fanbois refer to it as a "product", "platform", "solution", etc - and yet provide not a single example where the features of the client itself would make the user more happy and productive.
Yes, I said the word: User!
It's the users that matter most.
And Notes client makes any user miserable.
It is slow, it uses non-standard interface elements, and it has a really steep learning curve (even for the 'engineer' types). I am not a big fan of Outlook, but even Outlook is light years ahead of Notes.
As for the Domino server itself... That thing is just as bad as the client.
Its raison d'etre seems to be simplification of development process.
And it might have made (some limited) sense in 1995.
Not anymore.
Everything, and I mean everything, that you can do with Domino, you can do with Ruby, PHP/MySQL/PostgreSQL, WebObjects, or Java.
You can do it in less time, using highly visual dev environments. You can also easily collaborate on the development process, and systematically create concise documentation. The finished product will run fast and solid, and it won't depend on proprietary (terrible) client software. You will just need a web browser.
Domino, on the other hand, is pure garbage. I remember working in a 20 person company back in '00 where we had a Domino server running on a dual 500MHz PIII server with 2 gigs of RAM - very expensive at the time. It was very hard on the poor machine. It was choking. And the only three things the server was used for were email, very basic scheduling, and a billable hour tracking app. Not that that server is any speed demon by modern standards... But a non-Domino system having the same functionality would not have created any measurable load on the server at all with only 20 users. Did I also mention the server was less than stable? And I still remember how SP6 for NT completely brought the damn thing down... Ouch.

I agree for the most part. It's the same where I work. We had one resident Domino fan (who left us about 8 months ago), and she was the only one in our department who really liked it. Most IT people I know hate Lotus Notes, and our department is no exception. The client is an absolute pain in the ass to contend with. The whole system of IDs and certifiers is a nightmare.

Here are some perfect examples of what's wrong with Domino/Notes.

1. A friend of mine where I work accidentally deleted her Notes ID file one time. (for those of you who don't know, unless you're using the web client, a Notes ID is what stores your personal information [including your password] and you need this to log on to the system). We tried to restore her ID from a backup copy we made when the account was originally created, but it wouldn't work because this copy of the ID was from before she got married, and her name was changed on Domino. The resident Domino fangirl putzed around with it for hours, and could not get it to work. She ended up deleting the account and recreating it, blaming my friend saying "she made a dumb mistake by deleting her ID file." That may have been so, but doesn't it seem a bit ridiculous that there isn't a "Regenerate Notes ID" button in Administrator? Seems like a stupid thing to leave out. So, someone accidentally deletes their ID file (which I'm sure happens at places all the time), you can't regenerate it, and you have to recreate the account? Ludicrous.

2. Or how about the fact that in Domino Admin, I can't change the password in an ID file, so if someone forgets it, they're SOL? As the admin I can't change a password???!!?

3. We've currently got about 5000 users on our student email server. These are iNotes only users -- they don't get ID files and they don't use the Notes client, just web-mail. Domino doesn't provide anyway to track usage of these, only with Notes-ID clients. I've been trying to come up with a way to show how many people are accessing their accounts, and you just can't do it. I've spent hours on the phone with IBM trying to figure this out, and I can't. Their techs don't know how to do it. I'm trying to figure out who hasn't used their account in a year or more so they can be deleted, and IBM doesn't give you any way to track usage through the web client.

Good stuff.

I do have to say though, that although the client is awful and a pain to use, and that users are difficult to administrate sometimes, the server itself holds up pretty well. It really doesn't crash much.

[thunng8]

Domino, on the other hand, is pure garbage. I remember working in a 20 person company back in '00 where we had a Domino server running on a dual 500MHz PIII server with 2 gigs of RAM - very expensive at the time. It was very hard on the poor machine. It was choking. And the only three things the server was used for were email, very basic scheduling, and a billable hour tracking app. Not that that server is any speed demon by modern standards... But a non-Domino system having the same functionality would not have created any measurable load on the server at all with only 20 users. Did I also mention the server was less than stable? And I still remember how SP6 for NT completely brought the damn thing down... Ouch.
Well, the company where I have work has 30,000 email users and it runs perfectly on a 8 Core AIX Power5 machine, so I'm not sure how a dual p3 couldn't handle 20 users unless it was very poorly configured.

[yellow]

It was set to spellcheck all outgoing messages automatically, but lost the location of its dictionary. How do you think Notes would handle that? Just inform the user, "I can't spellcheck, but would you like me send out the message anyway?", right? Wrong! It wouldn't let the user send any mail at all, until I remoted in and disabled the spellcheck entirely. When I was back on site today, I had to reinstall Notes on her machine to fix it.

I've run into this one a few times.. very annoying..

[yellow]

Well, the company where I have work has 30,000 email users and it runs perfectly on a 8 Core AIX Power5 machine

Same here, except we have 2x that many users on Notes. I find it funny all the emails sent out that we get as Domain Notes Admins complaining about mail files nearing the 2GB limit (file size limitation in the version of AIX being used).

[iNewbie]

I agree for the most part. It's the same where I work. We had one resident Domino fan (who left us about 8 months ago), and she was the only one in our department who really liked it. Most IT people I know hate Lotus Notes, and our department is no exception. The client is an absolute pain in the ass to contend with. The whole system of IDs and certifiers is a nightmare.

Here are some perfect examples of what's wrong with Domino/Notes.

1. A friend of mine where I work accidentally deleted her Notes ID file one time. (for those of you who don't know, unless you're using the web client, a Notes ID is what stores your personal information [including your password] and you need this to log on to the system). We tried to restore her ID from a backup copy we made when the account was originally created, but it wouldn't work because this copy of the ID was from before she got married, and her name was changed on Domino. The resident Domino fangirl putzed around with it for hours, and could not get it to work. She ended up deleting the account and recreating it, blaming my friend saying "she made a dumb mistake by deleting her ID file." That may have been so, but doesn't it seem a bit ridiculous that there isn't a "Regenerate Notes ID" button in Administrator? Seems like a stupid thing to leave out. So, someone accidentally deletes their ID file (which I'm sure happens at places all the time), you can't regenerate it, and you have to recreate the account? Ludicrous.

2. Or how about the fact that in Domino Admin, I can't change the password in an ID file, so if someone forgets it, they're SOL? As the admin I can't change a password???!!?

3. We've currently got about 5000 users on our student email server. These are iNotes only users -- they don't get ID files and they don't use the Notes client, just web-mail. Domino doesn't provide anyway to track usage of these, only with Notes-ID clients. I've been trying to come up with a way to show how many people are accessing their accounts, and you just can't do it. I've spent hours on the phone with IBM trying to figure this out, and I can't. Their techs don't know how to do it. I'm trying to figure out who hasn't used their account in a year or more so they can be deleted, and IBM doesn't give you any way to track usage through the web client.

Good stuff.

I do have to say though, that although the client is awful and a pain to use, and that users are difficult to administrate sometimes, the server itself holds up pretty well. It really doesn't crash much.

MattG,

Regarding your item #1. Notes is this way because of SECURITY. When an ID is created it contains encryption keys. This is what allows it to communicate with the notes server and also secure data. IF the user chooses to encrypt their data, like e-mail, then without that ID the data is safe. End of discussion. Even the administrator can't get to it. Notes is a highly secure envoirnment. You don't hear stories or people hacking the notes server, or getting spyware, or any of that Exchange business...
Security is the opposite of convenience. Now if the user in question did NOT take advantage of encrypting data then your notes "fangirl" could have simply deleted the user from the address book, created the user again with the same name and it would have worked fine which is what she ended up doing.. The reason why the name change caused a problem is because the backup ID wasn't updated at the same time - which is ok at long as you store your history of changes in the admin4 database. That change was probably very old and purged from the database. Regarding ID's what some companies do - mine included is store all the users ID's with a default password in a secure place - give the users copies and force them to change their password. Obviously there's a huge problem with this. Whoever stores these ID's has the keys to the kingdom - including being able to get to encrypted information. We chose to add some convenience at the cost of security in this case. Certainly the user did NOTHING wrong! One way or the other it should have been a 15 minute fix.

Also there is a built in method for password recovey of notes id file - but I'm more a developer so I haven't messed with that. It does need to be setup ahead of time I think.

Regarding item 3. You can easily see who's accessing a domino server by using the notes log (log.nsf). Wether it's the client or browser all access is recorded. Look under usage by user. Only the people who are using the sever will show up in this list. Typically data is only stored for 5-6 days but this can be changed. You can also go into any database and via the property screen get all the activity detail from there.

Regarding your specific need. You should be able to get a pretty good idea of the last login time of a user in the person documents last updated field. I think that's updated daily.

If you have other questions I highly recommend you head over to www.notes.net. (now called ibm developerworks or something) There are excellent forums there.

[MattG]

MattG,
Regarding your item #1. Notes is this way because of SECURITY. When an ID is created it contains encryption keys. This is what allows it to communicate with the notes server and also secure data. IF the user chooses to encrypt their data, like e-mail, then without that ID the data is safe. End of discussion. Even the administrator can't get to it. Notes is a highly secure envoirnment. You don't hear stories or people hacking the notes server, or getting spyware, or any of that Exchange business...
Security is the opposite of convenience. Now if the user in question did NOT take advantage of encrypting data then your notes "fangirl" could have simply deleted the user from the address book, created the user again with the same name and it would have worked fine which is what she ended up doing.. The reason why the name change caused a problem is because the backup ID wasn't updated at the same time - which is ok at long as you store your history of changes in the admin4 database. That change was probably very old and purged from the database. Regarding ID's what some companies do - mine included is store all the users ID's with a default password in a secure place - give the users copies and force them to change their password. Obviously there's a huge problem with this. Whoever stores these ID's has the keys to the kingdom - including being able to get to encrypted information. We chose to add some convenience at the cost of security in this case. Certainly the user did NOTHING wrong! One way or the other it should have been a 15 minute fix.
Sorry, but that's just stupid (not what you said, but the fact that it's like that). If you've got the enviroment setup correctly, then it's already secure and only the administrator should be able to log in as one and regenerate an ID anyway. If it's setup securely, then I'm the only one who should have access to it, and I should be able to do it. Period. It doesn't need to be so secure that the administrator can't administrate.

Also there is a built in method for password recovey of notes id file - but I'm more a developer so I haven't messed with that. It does need to be setup ahead of time I think.
We've tried to make this work a number of times and have been unsuccessful. Again, this should be an easy thing to do. All of the security-overkill that Domino turns on by default should be optional. If this were a government agency, it'd be one thing. We're a small private college. Our email server should be secure but it doesn't have to be Fort Knox. I should be able to change a password as an administrator more easily.

Regarding item 3. You can easily see who's accessing a domino server by using the notes log (log.nsf). Wether it's the client or browser all access is recorded. Look under usage by user. Only the people who are using the sever will show up in this list. Typically data is only stored for 5-6 days but this can be changed. You can also go into any database and via the property screen get all the activity detail from there.

Again, this does not show accesses via iNotes. When I list by user, it only shows the people accessing using Notes IDs and the Notes client, which is our administrators, not students. See the attached picture...there's 7 users listed there, and they are all admins and servers. I need to see accesses via iNotes. And, I need to go back a year, so even if this method did work we'd be talking thousands of accounts that I need to get last-opened dates on. Looking it up this way would be tedious. I need to export a list and this information simply does not exist.
Regarding your specific need. You should be able to get a pretty good idea of the last login time of a user in the person documents last updated field. I think that's updated daily.
The 'last updated' field shows when the person doc was last updated by an Administrator. I tried that already...believe me.

I know Notes/Domino has a lot of upsides, but in my opinion, the difficulty of doing simple tasks as mentioned above makes the bad outweigh the good.

[iNewbie]

MattG,

I stand corrected on a couple or your points. Again I'm mostly a developer and only dabble with admin.

Regarding the iNotes user issue. Their activity IS logged differently. You need to turn that on in the server document. On the interent Protocols tab you can Enable logging to text files and then review it with a standard application or to a notes database Domlog.nsf. It's likely done this way for performance reasons. A quick search on notes.net gave me this answer.

Regarding the last login time of a user, again it looks like you're correct regarding the person document. I did not find an immediate built in solution for this, which doesn't surprise me. Remember notes is more of a programming environment then a simple application. It's understood that if it doesn't do something out of the box you can build it yourself. If you don't like how mail works, change it or download a new template. If you need new views in the log database you can add them. If you want to track the last time a person hit's their e-mail database there are several ways to do that. Searching on Notes.net (2 forums) for "last login" or something similar will give you some ideas. If you activate the domlog.nsf database then you can write a little code, get the information you're looking for, and track it however you want. While it's not a built in feature, the fact remains that using the notes development tools you can do it yourself and you're not limited to how Lotus implements a solution.

Regarding the stupidity of the security solution.... In some Environments like the CIA and NSA which use notes, you simply don't want a notes administrator to be able to access peoples e-mails or other information that they shouldn't be able to get to. They need to administer the system but not all the data. Notes security solves this problem.

Now as you say you're a small college so you don't need this level of security. There's lots of posts and thoughts on ID management. Again if the user that was renamed wasn't using encryption then there is no issue as something can be recreated. the other was to go is to store the default id's in a "secure" place with the default passwords. But while convenient, this can cause problems.

However, I would say that if an administrator ever got caught reading the Dean's e-mails the school would quickly want to increase the security level. There's now a lot of laws regarding privacy...


Notes is not an end user solution. It's marketed to businesses and organizations. In my opinion, there should never be a notes environment that has an administrator but no developer. It can be one and the same, but someone really needs to know formula languge and lotusScript. With some development, you can write simple programs which do simple tasks.

As an alternative you might want to check openntf.org. It's a Notes Opensource site and has things like a new mail template, user administration tools, etc...

[yellow]

So, unless the new Notes is NO LONGER a carbonized app, and therefore made universal, this is all ******** and Lotus Notes on the Mac still sucks.

[kathukid]

Does anyone out there know how to change the system Fonts on Lotus Notes for Mac?

I use the program to connect to my company email while at home, but the fonts are so small I have to change my display resolution in order to read messages.

The only thing I've found is under system preferences which allows you to change the font, but not the size of the font.

The help menu tells how it can be done in Windows by changing the lotus.ini file settings, but all it tells me for the Mac version is to go to Preferences.

[FFTT]

What's the point of using Lotus Notes at all?

Any SMART company could be encrypting all their secure e-mail with PGP encryption.

I suppose these IT administrators feel better knowing they can read the content
of all your e-mails which makes their jobs more secure.

[NoNothing]

That would be my first thought.

[FFTT]

It might be interesting if Lotus Notes messenging client could be used along with
iSight for professional video conferencing rather than just IM's

Even more so if those IM's could be encrypted to PGP standards.

[yellow]

Does anyone out there know how to change the system Fonts on Lotus Notes for Mac?

Yes... there's an application availabe on the Notes website that allows you to change the font size. It's called Notes Preference Editor.

And yes, Notes is much more than just a handicapped email system. It's also a handicapped calendaring system, a handicapped database, a handicapped information distribution system, etc.

And PGP isn't that simple to set up on a per-user basis (unless something has changed drastically in the last 3 years since I last looked at PGP?), and if a corporation has 40,000 users on email, that's a ******** of PGP setups to make. Beyond that.. your work email isn't your property. ;)

[fisha]

The underlying ideas of Notes and its databases is really very good and the programming ability is not too hard to pick up.

But,

The interface of Notes is frankly horrendous and epitomises IBM and Lotus's inability to stick with the program when it comes to following interface trends.

my biggest bug-bear on the PC with notes is the F5 button. Within windows hitting F5 will nearly always refresh the display . . . especially useful for windows explorer and email clients.

but hit F5 in Notes and oh look . . . logged out of the system. Please enter your password. :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

overall, i like it, but the constant divergent drive from trying to integrate the interface to something the rest of the world is used to ( Mac / Linux / Windows ) is a PITA.

[yellow]

Welp... Got Notes 7.02 today.

Visually, it looks "fatter". The fonts are more substantial. Almost bold in look. It also looks more "modern" if you will.. or more "mac-like".
The installer actually uses the default OS X installer. That's nice.
The whole BS "Lotus Notes" directory with all it's turds is replaced by a nice Notes.app applicaiton bundle. That's nice.
They added Safari as an option for URL handlers. That's nice.
It upgraded 6.5.x just fine, though I had moved my data directory to my home directory a while back, not sure (yet) how the upgrade will go if one's data directory still exists in the app's hierarchy.
It IS a Universal Binary! WooHoo!! That's REALLY nice!

It's still a carbon app. That's NOT nice. You'll notice the old MacOS watch icon. A sure sign of a carbonized app.
It still uses BinHex 4.0 as the default Mac attachment encoder. That's NOT nice.


I don't know how it handles emails with embeded java or HTML (I'm sure other users have experienced Notes crashes when reading some emails with HTML in them). Wait and see on that one.
It seems to be a bit faster, despite being a carbon app still. Wait and see on that one.

[agentkow]

Welp... Got Notes 7.02 today.

Where did you "get" it? Is this something you went out to the store and got, or does IBM provide your company with it, or is this an update and/or a download you find on the IBM site that anyone could install?

I've tried to navigate ibm.com to find patches and updates and stuff, but the site is a maze of bad design and hard-to-find information...

[MattG]

Welp... Got Notes 7.02 today.

Visually, it looks "fatter". The fonts are more substantial. Almost bold in look. It also looks more "modern" if you will.. or more "mac-like".
The installer actually uses the default OS X installer. That's nice.
The whole BS "Lotus Notes" directory with all it's turds is replaced by a nice Notes.app applicaiton bundle. That's nice.
They added Safari as an option for URL handlers. That's nice.
It upgraded 6.5.x just fine, though I had moved my data directory to my home directory a while back, not sure (yet) how the upgrade will go if one's data directory still exists in the app's hierarchy.
It IS a Universal Binary! WooHoo!! That's REALLY nice!

It's still a carbon app. That's NOT nice. You'll notice the old MacOS watch icon. A sure sign of a carbonized app.
It still uses BinHex 4.0 as the default Mac attachment encoder. That's NOT nice.


I don't know how it handles emails with embeded java or HTML (I'm sure other users have experienced Notes crashes when reading some emails with HTML in them). Wait and see on that one.
It seems to be a bit faster, despite being a carbon app still. Wait and see on that one.

Well good to hear there are some improvements. Will have to see about downloading this today.

[Mac'Mo]

wtf is lotus notes? more ppl getting on the Appl BW

[MattG]

Address Book syncing now works!!! I'm happy. 7.0.2 definitely is a lot nicer looking. Will have to play around with it some more today.

And Sametime!! They added Sametime!

I never thought I would say this, but thanks IBM...you finally made the Mac version of Notes livable. I'm as excited as I could be about something Notes related :)

[yellow]

or does IBM provide your company with it

Bingo.

[agentkow]

Bingo.

Crap, so that means the 2% of people at my school who use Macs will get it...never.