Public beta - early next week

March 8 2007

We've just communicated to IBMers and business partners that the Notes/Domino 8 beta 2, the "public beta", will be posted early next week.

Keep an eye on ibm.com/lotus/getnd8now, and of course, I'll announce availability here.

Ed Brill Chicago, IL USA Category:  Notes and Domino 8  Add/View Comments [45]

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  1. 1  Brian Martinez http://www.brianmartinez.org | 3/8/2007 10:01:18 AM

    That is great news. Thank you for keeping us posted.

  1. 2  Sylvain http://www.sikia.fr / www.dominoarea.org | 3/8/2007 10:05:14 AM

    YEeeeeeeeeessssssssssss ! :)

  1. 3  Jim Casale  | 3/8/2007 11:06:35 AM

    YAAAAHOOOOOOOOOOO

  1. 4  Stuart McIntyre http://quickrblog.com | 3/8/2007 11:14:57 AM

    Great conf call Ed....

    Can't wait to get my grubby hands on the Beta... The 18 months or so from Hannover announcement to beta has felt like a very long time...

  1. 5  Roger Hintz  | 3/8/2007 11:15:43 AM

    Any chance of getting release notes or at least hardware requirements early to get a jump on allocating something to run the beta?

  1. 6  Mark Hughes  | 3/8/2007 11:17:27 AM

    Is Sunday the first day of the week at IBM? ;)

  1. 7  Mike McGarel  | 3/8/2007 11:20:54 AM

    I'm waiting with "beta"'d breath. :)

  1. 8  diego ogniben  | 3/8/2007 11:21:16 AM

    Great news, just seen it live at today LCTY event in Padua (really crowded, by the way)

  1. 9  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 3/8/2007 11:21:37 AM

    @5 - if you're running Vista, I'd recommend 2 gb of RAM. Mind you, that has nothing to do with Notes. I'd just recommend 2 gb of RAM. ;o)

  1. 10  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 3/8/2007 11:32:51 AM

    @4, of course, this is beta -2-... we've been in beta for over four months already.

    @5 sorry, it's all staged together.

    @6 no, esp. not with DST changes coming this Sunday :-)

  1. 11  Stuart McIntyre http://quickrblog.com | 3/8/2007 11:39:48 AM

    @10 OK, Ed, Public beta ;-)

  1. 12  One Lotus Developer http://onelotusdeveloper.blogspot.com/ | 3/8/2007 11:58:24 AM

    Someone will die if this is an early April 1st practical joke!!

    My LNB (Lotus Notes Beta) Syndrome will finally come to an end...

  1. 13  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 3/8/2007 12:28:29 PM

    @9 - Actually, that's pretty much on target.

  1. 14  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 3/8/2007 1:11:02 PM

    @13 - actually it was a cheap shot but it made me smile so I considered it worthwhile

  1. 15  David Russell  | 3/8/2007 1:16:32 PM

    Yayyyyy!

  1. 16  David Bell  | 3/8/2007 1:16:56 PM

    With respect to hardware requirements. If you're running XP today with a recent mail client, recent browser, office suite and maybe newsreader and running them together (plus the plethora of OS services and smaller utilities / tools) then if you don't have 1GB RAM, your experience is probably pretty lousy - especially with XP's aggressive paging.

    Lot's of people seem to be up in arms when they hear numbers like 1GB RAM, like it's some huge leap. I'm wondering how are they coping today ?

  1. 17  J. Balster http://www.nidera.com | 3/8/2007 1:53:36 PM

    HHHHiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh YESSSSSSSS.... let that ND8 come my way!!!!!!!!!!!!

  1. 18  Mika Heinonen  | 3/8/2007 1:55:15 PM

  1. 19  Mika Heinonen http://siipi.com/mika | 3/8/2007 1:58:12 PM

    Oops, sorry pressed enter and created a empty comment :)

    But yes, this is great news, so "early next week" can only mean tuesday or wednesday, actually tuesday is the only day which qualifies as "early next week". I assume the beta forums are also opening at the same time? I can't wait to post my testing results and improve the final product!

  1. 20  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 3/8/2007 1:58:51 PM

    @14 - I mean that it's pretty much right for ANY Expeditor-based application. I have no idea what the implications of Expeditor on Vista are. But in XP, which I run in a very stripped-down mode, all Expeditor stuff is a memory hog. I'm not just talking Notes 8 here.

    But as David points out in 16, running with less than 1GB RAM is painful pretty much anywhere now.

    I just think it's interesting that we're looking at a situation now where a responsive client is going to have VERY similar CPU/RAM specs as a responsive server. I don't think it's unjustified -- just amusing.

  1. 21  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 3/8/2007 2:05:41 PM

    @19 - "But yes, this is great news, so "early next week" can only mean tuesday or wednesday, actually tuesday is the only day which qualifies as "early next week"."

    LMAO. Folks, if you're counting the hours like this, you're really going to hurt yourself. That's just silly.

  1. 22  Keith Brooks http://kbmsg.blogspot.com | 3/8/2007 2:17:15 PM

    looking forward to it.

    I run 1/2 gb ram and have no issues on XP so unless 8 is whole hog slow I don't see the need to push it.

    Ok, I'm, just lazy and haven't ordered more ram yet :-p

  1. 23  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 3/8/2007 2:36:14 PM

    @20 and @22 - I've seen the 'memory hogging' get better week by week, and as performance tuning work continues I would guess that it's tricky to pinpoint the final 8.0 footprint right now. Let's put it this way... Notes 8 loads a few bits and bobs into memory, but when I look at the task manager now Firefox is the biggest individual thing in memory by quite some margin.

  1. 24  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 3/8/2007 2:37:54 PM

    ...and before anyone else points it out, I am aware that RAM consumption isn't the only performance factor ;o)

  1. 25  Senthil Kumar http://senthilkumars.blogspot.com/ | 3/8/2007 2:46:02 PM

    So the real "WOW" begins next week. Come, join the party :)

    Look forward to see this.

  1. 26  Roger Hintz  | 3/8/2007 3:46:58 PM

    Darren,

    Actually, in #5 I was referring to Domino requirements. My Thinkpad is already running LCD and has a 10 GB VMWare partition for SuSE SLED 10 for playing around so I'm not too worried about the client. ;-)

  1. 27  Craig Lordan http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dwteamblog.nsf | 3/8/2007 3:53:51 PM

    @19 Yes, the ND8 beta forum will be open at the same time as the entire beta program. A couple of weeks ago I blogged about how to get ready for the forum: { Link }

  1. 28  Andrew Kennel  | 3/8/2007 4:10:04 PM

    Great news on the beta. Been looking forward to this all year.

    Quick question that I haven't seen addressed anywhere yet, will we be able to install this side-by-side with an existing v7 client, or is it an upgrade only install?

  1. 29  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 3/8/2007 4:33:13 PM

    @28 - I have both installed and they can run independently. Notes 8 will try to upgrade Notes 7 but you can get past that.

  1. 30  Hynek Kobelka http://www.pylonware.com | 3/8/2007 4:51:33 PM

    Great news ! Looking forward for it :-)))

    Can anybody already share some comments on these questions:

    1) Are there any functions in the Notes 8 client, which can only be run with a Domino 8 server ? If yes, which one ? (Activities ???)

    2) Do any of functions require even some additional components besides the Domino 8 server, like DB2 or Websphere ???

    Such information would be useful to know in advance, so that we can prepare a proper testing environment. (Or maybe i can still test everything from my laptop like in all the previous versions. But that would be too good to be true :-)) )

  1. 31  Gary Wickham  | 3/8/2007 5:42:49 PM

    @30 - Meeting Placeholders (ghosts) also require a Domino 8 server. Once the placeholder is created on the server replica, it persists when you rep locally.

  1. 32  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 3/8/2007 6:12:42 PM

    @30 - Activities requires an Activities server. Today, that's REALLY involved, because you do, indeed, need DB2 and Websphere.

    Other things...

    Conversations & threading in email working through to extranets requires a Domino 8 server.

    Some of the type-ahead stuff works better with a Domino 8 server, I think.

  1. 33  Ports http://www.mrports.com/ | 3/8/2007 7:16:58 PM

    @32 "Lotus Connections" will provide the support for Activities. You might be correct about the under lying technology but the intention is that it will not be "REALLY involved". It will be largely transparent to the admins (this is not the case now) and 100% transparent to the users who will not know or care.

    @30 Last I heard, the mail recall feature required at least one Domino 8 server in the infrastructure.

    @Everyone Beta 2 rocks :-)

  1. 34  emma  | 3/8/2007 7:24:23 PM

    Excellent timing! I was just getting ready to fill in the paperwork to upgrade to R8. It will be useful to have some test stats on which to base my arguments for improved performance and efficiency.

  1. 35  Rob Ingram http://www.dominoblog.com | 3/8/2007 7:59:22 PM

    @30 Message recall and new out of office service also require Domino 8. You can get by with earlier Domino with Notes 8, but there are many other reasons to try the new server beta also. Click on the dominoblog link above to see learn more about Domino 8.

  1. 36  Rob Ingram http://www.dominoblog.com | 3/8/2007 8:01:57 PM

    @34 Dont have any stats yet, but read this page for areas of performance improvement in Domino 8.

    { Link }

  1. 37  Thilo Hamberger  | 3/9/2007 3:58:33 AM

    Will the download be available thru BitTorrent or will we see the IBM servers break down for the week? :)

  1. 38  Nathan T. Freeman http://nathan.lotus911.com | 3/9/2007 6:46:43 AM

    @33 - Yes, "Connections" includes the Activities server. But there's a beta of just activities now. The install is not transparent for Domino environments, and it won't be in the first release. You can see why here: { Link }

  1. 39  roberta  | 3/9/2007 5:39:32 PM

    This is the most exciting thing that has happened in my sad little Notes life in a LOOONG time! Thanks for breaking the news, Ed!

  1. 40  Jean-Yves  | 3/9/2007 9:49:51 PM

    It's already available....:-)))

    Files...mmm, search a little bit. I don't want Ed to be mad at me :-)

    specs:

    { Link }

    Look on notes.net...

    JYR

  1. 41  Jean-Yves  | 3/9/2007 9:59:11 PM

    :-))

    Hurry, 550 kb\sec

    { Link }

  1. 42  Jean-Yves  | 3/9/2007 10:13:05 PM

    After the DST, I will have another reason to work late :-)

    { Link }

    JYR

  1. 43  Greg Walrath  | 3/10/2007 1:22:16 AM

    Apparently 'early next week' means 'now'.

    { Link }

    3.2MB/sec.! W00t!

  1. 44  Peter Smith  | 3/10/2007 5:34:21 AM

    Great! - Beat the Monday rush :-)

    Clear the diary, R8 has come to town.

  1. 45  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 3/10/2007 7:36:00 AM

    @43 - see my new post -- development decided to have a little fun on a Friday afternoon. At the time I wrote this, Monday was our planned target... hey, good to be surprised once in a while!