Comments on: IBM In Denial Over Lotus Notes? http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2005/04/11/ibm-in-denial-over-lotus-notes/ General interest observations and true web-log. Sun, 12 Feb 2012 16:37:09 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: A.J. http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2005/04/11/ibm-in-denial-over-lotus-notes/comment-page-1/#comment-29141 A.J. Wed, 13 Apr 2005 18:17:57 +0000 http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=1790#comment-29141 The old Interface Hall of Shame had an excellent page deriding the insane design of Notes 4.6; you can scare up a cached version via Google. As part of my job, I send HTML messages to clients. Notes 5 is simply unable to properly render HTML, so for those poor folks who are stuck with using it, I have to send them plain text. (Please direct arguments over the morality of sending HTML mail to /dev/null, please. I know all about it.) Why don't companies who're using Notes just scrap the stupid thing and switch to Thunderbird? (Or PC-Pine? That's what I use, and you can't beat the speed!) The old Interface Hall of Shame had an excellent page deriding the insane design of Notes 4.6; you can scare up a cached version via Google.

As part of my job, I send HTML messages to clients. Notes 5 is simply unable to properly render HTML, so for those poor folks who are stuck with using it, I have to send them plain text. (Please direct arguments over the morality of sending HTML mail to /dev/null, please. I know all about it.)

Why don’t companies who’re using Notes just scrap the stupid thing and switch to Thunderbird? (Or PC-Pine? That’s what I use, and you can’t beat the speed!)

]]> By: T.C. Moore http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2005/04/11/ibm-in-denial-over-lotus-notes/comment-page-1/#comment-28178 T.C. Moore Mon, 11 Apr 2005 22:58:01 +0000 http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=1790#comment-28178 I always thought the Notes achitecture was very cool. General free-form databases that were stored as one file, could be easily replicated and synchronized across servers, and could have custom applications built upon them, like the Domino Web server add-on that became the raison d'etre for the product. Outside of e-mail, it sold well to law firms, because you could dump free-form legal documents in there, have indexed search, and easily distribute the databases to your lawyer's laptops. The problem is that synchronizing a Notes database containing thousands of e-mails that users never cleaned up, over a 56K line, took an insanely long time. It used a generalized synchronization algorithm, instead of one optimized for e-mail (i.e. mostly one-way). With MS Exchange's becoming the default standard and constantly improving performance, it eventually took over. AFAIK, IBM never significantly improved the Notes architecture, performance, or kept up with the latest expectations in e-mail clients. Trying to tackle web serving, e-mail, and indexed search in one product, while staying on the cutting edge, is now impossible. ------ Short time Lotus Notes user at IBM (at least it was better than VM (mainframe) mail!) I always thought the Notes achitecture was very cool. General free-form databases that were stored as one file, could be easily replicated and synchronized across servers, and could have custom applications built upon them, like the Domino Web server add-on that became the raison d’etre for the product. Outside of e-mail, it sold well to law firms, because you could dump free-form legal documents in there, have indexed search, and easily distribute the databases to your lawyer’s laptops.

The problem is that synchronizing a Notes database containing thousands of e-mails that users never cleaned up, over a 56K line, took an insanely long time. It used a generalized synchronization algorithm, instead of one optimized for e-mail (i.e. mostly one-way). With MS Exchange’s becoming the default standard and constantly improving performance, it eventually took over.

AFAIK, IBM never significantly improved the Notes architecture, performance, or kept up with the latest expectations in e-mail clients.
Trying to tackle web serving, e-mail, and indexed search in one product, while staying on the cutting edge, is now impossible.

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Short time Lotus Notes user at IBM (at least it was better than VM (mainframe) mail!)

]]> By: Tytus Suski http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2005/04/11/ibm-in-denial-over-lotus-notes/comment-page-1/#comment-27887 Tytus Suski Mon, 11 Apr 2005 12:07:49 +0000 http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=1790#comment-27887 Lotus Notes suck. -- Long time Lotus Notes user at IBM and other companies. Lotus Notes suck.
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Long time Lotus Notes user at IBM and other companies.

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