Ed Brill

Post a Comment

1. 1  Graham Dodge  | 5/29/2008 10:37:32 PM

   I was wondering how Lotus were going to release Foundation Server without finishing Symphony first.

   Should have guessed... now where's that download button :)

1. 2  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 5/29/2008 11:47:13 PM

   I have moved to using the stand alone version of Symphony vs the included editors in 801/85. Performance is much better in 1.0 ...

   I think we should have a rule at ILUG that you either present in Keynote or Symphony .. no powerpoint! :-)

1. 3  Rock http://www.lotusgeek.com | 5/30/2008 12:34:10 AM

   LOL - I downloaded this earlier tonight - around 8:30PM EDT - and I thought I would blog about it later. I decided to go ahead and do it now, but I thought I should check here first - and damned if you hadn't beaten me to the punch. ;)

   I thought I might have a chance because the date of the version is actually 30 May, yet it was available (as you noted). But alas, I should have known I can't beat "the Brillig" :)

1. 4  Rock http://www.lotusgeek.com | 5/30/2008 12:35:02 AM

   Oh, and one more thing - it is MUCH MUCH faster in the 1.0 release than it was in previous betas.

   So far, very nice!

1. 5  Sean Jennings  | 5/30/2008 7:12:19 AM

   Think you need more download mirrors!!

1. 6  Robert Baehr http://www.bobbaehr.com | 5/30/2008 8:30:38 AM

   How does IBM intend to upgrade the code that is integrated with the Notes Client? Is there a maintenace release slated for this?

1. 7  John Head  | 5/30/2008 12:06:23 PM

   Bob - the code will be updated in the next Notes 8.0.X MR (8.0.2 I believe) and is in the Notes 8.5 beta. I know there is also a project in process to allow for the updating of the embedded Symphony editors without waiting for a MR or feature version, but I do not think that is ready yet.

1. 8  Scott Marchione http://scottmarchione.blogspot.com | 5/30/2008 1:23:49 PM

   Well it must be a hit with everyone, because it seems that the site took a hit, after waiting for quite a while to even have the page load for me, I received the error message : The search function is temporarily unavailable.

   I guess I'll have to wait for the crowds to die down a bit.

1. 9  NeilT  | 6/1/2008 8:10:49 AM

   I guess I'll have to revert to type here.

   I didn't download this in beta, I had no need as Office suffices.

   I've never even installed the Notes 8 client. Basically because it failed in beta every time I tried to install it standalone and by the time that beta moved on Notes moved off my laptop.

   As I've said many times on here, I don't use Notes for personal stuff. That is becuase Outlook has done everything I needed for at least a decade and Notes really sucked for non Corporate in those days. I have seen no reason to change as time has gone on.

   So back to this.... Product?

   Well if this is "Way faster" That the Beta, then it's "Way too slow for me". I don't expect to look at a frozen splash screen I can't click away for over a minute. I don't expect my first doc to turn up in about a minute either.

   As for the style? You've got to be kidding right? Every single thing I said about multiple borders which were too big with frames that were too big and clunky in the 8 client beta phase are still there.

   I can't even raise the effort to laugh about it but MS must be.

   The only reason this product will ever be implemented is that is is a 0 cost purchase option (aka freeware), backed by a big software company.

   It might look good on a 2048x2048 monitor, but we're a little ways off from that right now.

   However on second thoughts it may look good on a 1680x1050 15" developers screen?

   I've avoided this product for a long time because I didn't want to have my worst fears confirmed. I shouldn't have bothered.

   You can guess that any time anyone asks me about this product as an alternative (and I get asked about these things fairly often), I won't be giving a thumbs up.

   If the productivity tools in Notes 8 are slower than this, I'd be turning them off before installation. You can do that right? Or would I have to give my users the same old same old binary client to get some performance and sanity in design?

1. 10  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 6/1/2008 8:31:46 AM

   @9 so let me get this straight -- you took a test drive of a concept car at an auto show and now consider yourself expert enough to warn off customers from the shipping product?

1. 11  Ian Scott  | 6/1/2008 2:51:51 PM

   @9 - I had issues with a couple of the Notes 8 betas but thankfully I wasn't deterred and, heck, betas are always a bit ropey. It's a shame you didn't persevere.

   I have continual problems with parts of MS Office taking ages to launch and save and display dialogs, not shutting down cleanly, or simply crashing. I still think MS Office is pretty good though even if it is way too much overkill for my modest needs. Maybe it just hasn't been installed right.

1. 12  NeilT  | 6/2/2008 7:47:54 AM

   @10

   Ed, there are expectations to shipping software. If you remember I was there when the concept was being made. I had my say.

   1.0 is not a concept, it's shipping software. What I'm saying is I would not foist this on my customers. Does that make a different message?

   I'm in the process of exiting another community right now. They did exactly the same thing. Asked for comments, listened to very few of them, produced a new tool nobody had asked for with serious style and performance issues.

   The community lost 50% of it's users in the first week and is slowly dying.

   I think the parallel is interesting when even loyal Notes/Domino people are still saying that the 8.x Notes client has serious performance and stability issues.

1. 13  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 6/2/2008 10:24:17 AM

   @12 I was making a distinction between Symphony stand-alone and Notes 8. You haven't looked at Symphony's stand-alone 1.0 release and haven't seen any version of it since the code level that was in Notes 8 or 8.0.1. 8.0.2 is going to address a lot in terms of Notes 8 performance and some of that work is in Symphony at a base level as well. It just sounded like you've made your judgement before seeing the final evidence.

1. 14  John Head http://www.johndavidhead.com | 6/2/2008 12:19:47 PM

   @12 Symphony 1.0 is super fast ... splash screen is almost instant, symphony welcome page is less than 20. its about the same as word 2007 on my laptop

   Before you place judgment, actually use the software please.

1. 15  MarvinK  | 6/2/2008 1:46:28 PM

   What percent of IBM no longer has MS Office installed--and is using Symphony as their only office suite? I definitely think rapid IBM adoption would speak volumes.

   Any word on support for Office 2007 OOXML formats?

1. 16  NeilT  | 6/3/2008 9:04:24 AM

   @14 John,

   After 1 minute waiting for a frozen splash screen and 1 minute waiting for a document to load what more is there to say? Or do?

   You forget, you use the Eclipse framework I don't. I guess that makes a diffeence when you load up another Eclipse app.

   I don't use ugly software. If I'm going to use a freeware package for my office work it'll be OpenOffice as I consider the whole look and feel 3rd grade art and ulgy. Sorry it's just the way I feel about it.

   I've had my say all along with this and the reason I'm still unhappy is because I keep getting the same reply. Good innit?

   Er, to me, NO.

   Oh,BTW, I use Norton 360. It hates J2EE apps with billions of files. Which kind of leaves me in the binaray camp where I'm happy.

1. 17  Mike Brown  | 6/3/2008 6:49:21 PM

   The Symphony 1.0 splash screen loads pretty quick, but it's still way too slow to create that first document; about 15-20 seconds, which was enough to make me think that it had hung. Word 2002 on the same (Win XP) machine, loads up instantly, and with a blank, new document ready and waiting.

   Thereafter, Symphony 1.0 can create new documents almost instantaneously too, even after I've closed and re-opened it. All of which is somewhat suspicious because I've turned of the pre-loads ("Enable performance optization" setting) and set the "Remove from memory after" setting (under Memory->Graphics cache) to zero. Despite that, soffice.exe still hangs around in memory after I've closed Symphony down, which is very annoying. But even if I kill soffice.exe before re-opening Symphony, creating new documents is still nice and quick. It's just that first one, after you log in to your PC. (I'm not running Notes 8).

   Having said that, who knows what tricks Microsoft is pulling to get Word to load up so fast. I wouldn't put it past them to loading half of Word into memory at boot up, under the guise of "system dlls".

   Cheers,

   - Mike

1. 18  MarvinK  | 6/3/2008 9:28:30 PM

   Ya--Microsoft uses their OS framework to make Word load up fast. With IBM's latest products, you basically are loading up a mini OS with the whole Eclipse framework. It's too bad IBM isn't using the same pre-existing framework that Microsoft uses for their applications. If they did, Notes 8 wouldnt be using 300+MB of memory!

1. 19  Mike Brown  | 6/3/2008 11:04:11 PM

   But if IBM *did* use "the same pre-existing framework that Microsoft uses for their applications", then those applications would only run on Windows.

   Cheers,

   - Mike

1. 20  Blackadder  | 6/4/2008 5:07:18 AM

   @NeilT

   For someone pouring so much negativity onto Symphony and Lotus Notes, and NOT being a user of said 'crappy' products I can't help wondering why you are here posting...

   What are you so afraid of?

1. 21  Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com | 6/4/2008 6:26:52 AM

   Mike @18,

   Microsoft has had the "Office Startup Assistant" since at least Office 97.

   { Link }

   Its purpose is nothing more than to load the core shared Microsoft Office DLLs into memory, and handling some shared functionality.

   I seem to recall it taking a few seconds to load if you started it manually - but that was in Office 2000, quite some time ago. I've not used Office except on machines I have no choice on since then, so I've not tested it recently... ;-)

   So you've loaded half of Office by the time your desktop is ready to work. Why else do you think it takes so long to get to that point? *grins*

1. 22  MarvinK  | 6/4/2008 4:28:14 PM

   @19 Maybe so, but the IBM products wouldnt be unusually slow to load and have an unusually massive memory footprint for 80-90% of the clients running it. It's too bad they can't do a fully functional version optimized for Windows, along with one that requires the framework.

   @21 I turn off the startup assistant--and have ever since Office 97. Even so, Word 2007 opens in less than 5 seconds on my computer--and I'm only timing it because of this discussion. Notes 8 is something that opens slowly enough that it was worth timing. I've only used Symphony inside of Notes 8 & 8.01.

   I'm waiting for Ed Brill to respond about the commitment inside IBM to use it and drop Microsoft Office altogether before I'm willing to investigate it further for my company. I'm willing to bet most of IBM is running MS Office, and will be for at least several years.

1. 23  Mike Brown  | 6/4/2008 5:49:29 PM

   @21

   I'm not running Office Startup Assistant, Philip.

   Cheers,

   - Mike

1. 24  Timothy Briley  | 6/4/2008 6:24:49 PM

   @22 - The fact that you turned off the Office startup assistant doesn't mean that Windows isn't still loading some of Office anyway. My guess is that an apples-to-apples test would be to time the startup of Office and Notes R8 on a Mac.

1. 25  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 6/4/2008 7:19:21 PM

   @22 I'm pretty sure IBM has announced that Symphony will replace Office as the default productivity tools deployed internally by end of 2008. We did not renew our Microsoft enterprise agreement and it saved IBM about US$81 million.

1. 26  Mike Brown  | 6/4/2008 7:33:20 PM

   @24 - Quite so, Tim. But the end user doesn't know or care about such things. Appearance is everything, and to them, Word is just faster.

   This is why Microsoft should have been broken up, as per Judge Jackson's ruling.

   Cheers,

   - Mike

1. 27  MarvinK  | 6/4/2008 9:25:42 PM

   @25 Really? That is good to know--do you have MS Office installed on your computer? I'll have to find a press release or something. We're currently actively struggling with the cost of Office, but not seeing many companies successfully migrate off of it.