Ed Brill

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1. 1  Guy Alston  | 2/8/2006 7:14:51 PM

   I wish this blog would move more towards ways to make Notes better and use it more effectively, instead of just defending the standard waves of "Notes Sucks" complaints.

   All of the "Ambuj" is right posts - followed by the eventual, well maybe it is two seperate roads makes the cheerleading fall on deaf ears.

1. 2  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 2/8/2006 7:27:33 PM

   @1 Guy, I'm not sure that's really what I've set out to do, in and of itself. Perhaps you should check out my colleague Alan Lepofsky's blog { Link }

   I don't remember saying anything of the sort of "well maybe it is two separate roads". Examples, please?

1. 3  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 2/8/2006 7:39:30 PM

   @1 as @2 said, that is what I do, and have thousands of readers a day. The content from my site is also used internally in companies around the world, as was as translated into a few different languages. If there is a topic you'd like to see me cover, just let me know. I'm about to start writing a series on Replication... What is it, and how to use it from a users perspective. - Alan

1. 4  Kit Davis www.ynys.com/contrtech.nsf | 2/8/2006 9:49:02 PM

   The reality is that Notes is no worse of an email client than Outlook. Both have their quirks for sure, but they do the job. People for the most part just hate change. It’s pretty clear the authors of the article did not scratch the surface very deeply Certainly there are a lot of candidates out there for worst software program and to use the complaints of 20 or 30 people to justify naming Notes the worst program is pretty ridiculous. I’m betting that most of the contributors to the “Notes Sucks” site learned to use Outlook first and equate “different” with “poorer”. I seem to remember hearing similar rants 15 years ago from the parents of these whiners. Many large organizations made MSWord their standard word processor and the people that were users of WordPerfect just hated the switch to Word. Blogs and the Web didn’t exist, but I have plenty of memos from outraged users complaining that they now had to use the mouse to highlight text and click “B” to make it bold when before all they had to do was insert a control code. I’m sure that if I had been writing an article I could have gotten a lot of votes for Word being the world’s worst program.

1. 5  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 2/9/2006 2:32:25 AM

   I've just posted my response to Mr. Arthur's article.

   I recommend you take a look { Link }

1. 6  Axel  | 2/9/2006 2:59:17 AM

   To get the message of the upriping of the UI spread faster, IBM might think about how to make the process to get started with yet existing products with the UI easier.

   We know that the source of all evil from Redmond does offer easy to install tools of their third class software.

   So how about finding out, how to make the process of installing current version of workplace easier for programmers/consultants from business partners or innovative end user customers.

   I offer to invest part of my spare free time for an experiment:

   - A group of programmers/consultants from Germany/Austria installs workplace and assembles some demo stuff. We have people with real world experience in Domino, Java, Websphere, Eclipse-RCP, DB2, Websphere Portal and what not.

   - We try to figure out stuff inside the group. Every 4 days we assemble an email and send it to an email-adress inside IBM, where we report about the experience, the problems we found, etc.

   I think we would sign anything that we WON'T POST ANYTHING ABOUT IT ON THE WEB. I wouldn't do that. I am true gentleman.

   I think the transmission of the message should be fast and one way might be to fasten technology transmission.

   kind regards

   Axel

1. 7  Axel  | 2/9/2006 3:02:37 AM

   The 4 person interested so far are from different organizations. The only link between them is an active membership in one of the Notes/Domino forums in Germany.

1. 8  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 2/9/2006 4:02:20 AM

   Let's assume that The Guardian runs on R5 as deployed in 2000. Let's further assume that they run Macs. If you upgraded them to the latest and greatest Notes client for the Mac, it would still suck. Badly. You know that.

   You can safely assume that other editors at The Guardian will agree with Mr. Arthur.

1. 9  Radu Cadariu  | 2/9/2006 4:24:42 AM

   Hi Ed, out of the entire debate, the lotus_sucks_web_site is the funniest :) In fact, I didn't even knew it exists until I ran into your blog entry.

   But hey, criticism is good, perhaps ibm'ers should evaluate what that fellow complains about, even if the author of that site clearly does not care about the overall product. He only care about his mails :)

   btw, the future Hannover looks pretty good, congrats for your work and thanks for sharing.

   Radu

1. 10  Axel  | 2/9/2006 4:55:33 AM

   Assumptions are a nice thing, but there is allready a medium term strategy. Eclipse. It has a huge forward momentum and a lot of Domino people use at least the Java ide plug-in bundle on a daily basis.

   It even runs on Mac platforms.

   Instead of debating about who is attacking what and for which assumed reasons I think, it'ld make more sense to pave ways to make existing strategies and real world work more effective.

1. 11  Steve Castledine http://www.dominoblog.com | 2/9/2006 5:15:18 AM

   My comment got too big so posted here:

   { Link }

1. 12  Roberto Boccadoro  | 2/9/2006 11:48:41 AM

   @8 - Volker, let's say that Notes r5 on Mac sucks. The people at the Guardian use it hence they hate Notes. Fine. Do they have 119 million journalists at the Guardian????? If this were a comment on a blog I could even accept it as a personal opinion, but turning YOUR personal perception in an article and state EVERY user hates Notes, well............

   RoB

1. 13  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 2/9/2006 12:30:17 PM

   I believe he says that one million likes it. :-)

   Roberto, is this really so hard to understand? If you have been forced to work with a software for years that your employer imposes on you and that really, really sucks and then you come across a funny website that shares your pain, you will go yes, yes, yes on all of those pages. You are hearing your own echo and it tells you that you are not alone. And then you do check against a few people, and most likely a lot of them will agree with you, would that enforce your point of view?

   Did you notice that I have not said an anything about Notes yet? Have you noticed for instance that Wild Bill always asserts that Exchange is so terrible although he is not forced to work with it? And that everybody seems to agree here how bad Exchange is although they are not forced to work with it?. You may be surprised to hear that Exchange is actually a quite good email system. Not as good as Postfix/Cyrus, but frankly, it does more than email. It does calendars too, and it does them really well. So what is it? Are all those people liars here? Are they bad? BTW: Bruce Elgort, who devotes so much time running OpenNTF, is managing an Exchange environment. Ask him about it.

   Back to the journalist. He is not superman. He has a loud voice, that's all. And he has been heard. And there are lots of people out there who will go yes, yes, yes. And others will say WTF?

1. 14  Brett Hershberger  | 2/9/2006 12:35:06 PM

   Heh heh heh, I just to a trip down memory lane on the "wayback machine" at the Internet Archive and took a snapshot of the Guardian's web site from 1996, then sent it to them and proceded to trash it... Bashing an older version of a company's software is not on. I just thought I'd return the favor.

   Re the article, I noticed the lack of any alternaive products that they rate as better than Notes. Unfortunately we as a people tend to drag down the winner. When something is the best, the unscrupulous (spelling?) just want to bring it down for no reason but to make themselves important.

   Deep breaths Brett, deep breaths. It just get's my back up when hearsay, false info, FUD and the rest actually get published. But it IS the internet, we can say anything we want right?

   "The Register SUCKS"!

1. 15  Richard Schwartz http://www.rhs.com/poweroftheschwartz | 2/9/2006 12:37:44 PM

   At the risk of Volker accusing me once again of "pimping", here's a link to my response. It's not quite twentyseven 8x10 color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one... but it does have some graphics:

   { Link }

   -rich

1. 16  Brett Hershberger  | 2/9/2006 12:44:08 PM

   @15 Now THATS what I call research! Good job Richard! BTW I just watched "Spaceballs" last night so your tag line is spot on!!

1. 17  Brett Hershberger  | 2/9/2006 12:45:21 PM

   Oops Is flamed the wrong paper!!! Brett SUCKS too! The Guardian does the most though.

1. 18  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 2/9/2006 12:52:21 PM

   @13 I think the best quote I've heard today in this context is " A good workman never blames his tools".

   So what if his employer "forces" him to use Notes? You could make an exception for the fact that he is on OS 8 (not even 9!) and R5, but you know, somehow they publish a fine newspaper day in and day out.

1. 19  Sean Jennings  | 2/9/2006 12:55:54 PM

   Perhaps someone could send the 'journalist' from the Guardian the latest screenshots of "Hannover"? Or invite him to a preview of the beta at IBM UK?

   Notes biggest (only?) weakness is the GUI, or rather the dated look of it. Most users, who only use 20% of a product anyway, judge software by how pretty it looks. (Well aesthetics are important up to a point.)

   IBM have clearly recognized that with "Hannover", but playing catch-up wis difficult when the opposition isn't stationary. "Hannover" looks great now, but by the time it launches it will be judged in comparison to the prettiness of Office 12 and Windows Vista. (Assuming MicroSoft doesn't slip again...)

   One thought, making the Notes client 'skinnable' would be a great move...

1. 20  Bernard Devlin  | 2/9/2006 1:06:18 PM

   Up until very recently The Grauniad was most famous because they made so many typographical and spelling mistakes.

   { Link }

   Clearly, sometime in the last 10 years they mandated spell-checking. Pity they have yet to mandate fact-checking.

   I suspect that contributors such as the guy who wrote this piece are not considered real journalists, so clearly no need to do any fact-checking.

1. 21  Guy Alston  | 2/9/2006 1:53:43 PM

   @2 - Ed Brill - The problem with the "two-lane highway" was that there was an implication you would eventually have to move to the other lane, and it would take some superhuman feat to do so. So instead of following separate and parallel development paths, we started finding ways to integrate the new, Java-based, componentized technologies with the existing Notes/Domino products.

1. 22  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 2/9/2006 2:14:21 PM

   @21 - exactly right, so why does that say that "maybe it is two separate roads"?

1. 23  david racicot  | 2/9/2006 2:24:55 PM

   @6 and @10. Is every post on this blog an opportunity for this these NON Notes technology plugs? Some mention of Hanover may have been more in line with this thread.

1. 24  Mike McGarel  | 2/9/2006 2:30:41 PM

   It would be great if IBM would set up a Web site called "Lotus Notes Rocks" to promote its benefits and answer the critics. I know the information is out there but a one-stop site with a catchy name would make it easier to get the message out.

1. 25  Axel  | 2/9/2006 2:36:33 PM

   David,

   if Hannover would be out of ibm labs we would consider it.

   I certainly enjoy absurd situation, but it certainly is getting a bit to weird even for me, when I am starting to defend myself for installing Lotus software on a blog of a lotus manager?

   peace

   Axel

1. 26  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 2/9/2006 2:49:05 PM

   Sean, I have no idea what Notes looks like on OS 8/9. I am not even sure whether the latest version would even run on this system.

   However, I can tell you what Notes looks like on OS X. And it is not pretty. The problem is not that it does not "shine". It's just that you can't read anything, unless somebody hacks the binary preferences file for you. And if somebody has done it, all the dialogs blow up. Then you don't get any font smoothing so Notes sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of the system. There are 3rd party tools which help with that. The next issue is that you get the beach ball (hourglass) all the time because Notes is mostly single-threaded. Add a brazillion menu options that confuse a mail-only user.

   So, it's not the look of the GUI only, it is also how you handle it. The underpinnings are mostly OK. You cannot have a database file larger than 2 gig (will be finally fixed in 7.0.2) and you have all sorts of trouble with HTML formatted email which use CSS instead of tables, but HTML mails are evil anyway. :-)

1. 27  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 2/9/2006 2:51:38 PM

   Oh, I forgot the most important thing: It is incredibly slow, compared to all the other mail clients on the Mac. You don't notice if you are used to Notes, but if you are used to any of the other clients and you switch to Notes, it feels like slow motion.

1. 28  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 2/9/2006 2:52:39 PM

   I'm just sorry that I got on-line too late in the day, and by the time I'd called Ben and offered to call the journo myself, it was too late.

   I don't have much else to say on the subject that hasn't already been said by Ben or Ed (or Steve, I think his response was spot-on)... other than to extend an invite to Mr Arthur - come to one of the Lotusphere Comes To You events and take an educated view on the product.

   @8 - Vowe, whatever you think about Notes on the Mac, at least it's there. There is a choice. And there's a commitment to improve it.

1. 29  Bill Brown  | 2/9/2006 3:10:41 PM

   I HATE TINYURL!!!

   I saw them using it in this Guardian article and I refuse to follow them, so I have no idea what they are linking in the article. How hard is it to put a word in your article and make a link out of it??? I can then mouse over to the link, look at the URL and decide if I want to follow it or not.

1. 30  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 2/9/2006 3:13:05 PM

   Darren, I was not trying to complain about the Notes client. Just wanted to explain what kind of first-hand experience the author of this article has.

   It is a good thing that IBM woke up on the Notes client for the Mac. There is only a handful of Mac users inside IBM customers. But they tend to be the influential ones.

   IBM is slowly catching up. With Notes 7 the Mac client may be delayed up to a year from the original release. With Hannover that hopefully cuts down to half a year. I also believe there won't be a Sametime 7.5 client for the Mac when that comes out. Don't know from the top of my head but it may also be six months out.

1. 31  Alan Bell http://www.dominux.co.uk | 2/9/2006 3:14:39 PM

   I tried to post something on one of the blogs linked from the article but it seems broken right now. I was going to offer to visit him and demo some new stuff, but an invitation to Lotusphere comes to you is a great idea.

1. 32  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 2/9/2006 3:15:14 PM

   Bill, try url(x). It does show the domain. Like so: { Link } Do you like this better?

1. 33  Dave Delay http://runtimelog.blogspot.com | 2/9/2006 4:26:10 PM

   Ed, Ben and others, great job rebutting The Guardian.

   Not to pile on, but since I was quoted in the editorial, you might be interested in my reaction. Here it is:

   { Link }

1. 34  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 2/9/2006 4:53:50 PM

   BTW - @15 is a great response...@33 Dave, thanks for yours as well. "didn't lay a glove on Notes" -- awesome

1. 35  Charles Arthur (yes, that one) http://technology.guardian.co.uk/ | 2/9/2006 5:41:15 PM

   Riight. So.

   It would have been nice to talk to Ed sooner than I did. But the process of getting to talk to someone inside IBM about Notes took a lot longer than I expected. Or hoped.

   However, this was a story about USERS. It is NOT about how fantastic the Domino backend is. It's about what the user interface is like. That point is made in the article, but few seem to have read it.

   I notice that the people who are end users here make that point. It is the UI in Notes which people complain about. Not the functionality. But for most people, the UI *is* the functionality. Therefore comment 19 is precisely on the point. Notes's weakness is in the UI. And what do end users see? The UI. I have yet to meet someone who is an end user of Notes who is delighted by it compared to, say, Outlook or Entourage or Eudora or any number of other apps. And I have used a lot, and my associate editors have used a lot. But this was not - emphatically not - an article about my experience. It was an article triggered by our *readers'* experience, asking the question: why?

   To a few other points.

   Anonymity: is allowed where it permits a point to be made. I judged the sources to be authentic, without malice, and informed. I guess I get to make those calls.

   We use tinyurl because - guess what - we're a newspaper. Putting full-length URLs in would take up huge amounts of space; tinyurl is a lot shorter, and readers can still type it in. What are you scared of, that we're going to send you to a porn site?

   Volker's comments seem to me eminently reasonable and well argued. (That's probably got him into trouble now..)

1. 36  Richard Schwartz http://www.rhs.com/poweroftheschwartz | 2/9/2006 7:12:08 PM

   @35 Charles: Re "It was an article triggered by our *readers'* experience" Really?

   Please explain how this originated with your readers when in fact it was your paper's computer editor, Jack Schofield, who started the discussion with "Is Lotus Notes the world's worst application?". How does the fact that a few (a minority of respondants, actually) chime in to agree with Mr. Schofield constitute being triggered by your readers?

   And how does it equate to 119 million out of 120 million Notes users hating it?

   BTW: I've responded to your comments on my site. (Linked above in @15.

1. 37  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 2/9/2006 7:28:05 PM

   @35 First, I think it is great that you joined in here, kudos to you. In my opinion a major point that is often lost is that when people refer to "the Notes UI" they are just talking about their experience with email. As we all know, Notes is MUCH MORE than just email. I've seen dozens of Notes applications from Welcome Portals, to HelpDesk apps, to systems like Scout Advisor which I mentioned here: { Link } which have terrific UIs. Also, take a look at the Domino Administration database, I know "users" don't use this, but it is an example of a fantastic Notes UI. Also one of the most important things about Notes applications is how easily (and quickly) they can be modified. If you don't like the way we (IBM) ship a template, you can change it. For example, the excellent work done on the mail template by the developers at OpenNTF. I'd say almost every Notes customer has modified the mail template to meet their own needs. An additional column here, a new Action button there.

   Anyway, you apparently had a story to tell and you found a way to tell it. Your story did not go into equal detail about the thousands of companies (and users) that are thrilled with their Notes applications as it did on the "Notes Sucks" side, but that is your prerogative, as it is ours to point out the positives. Take a look a the case studies here: { Link } I think you'll find a lot of exciting things that you could have included.

   Now all of that said... yes the Notes client UI (meaning the bookmarks, menus, toolbars, etc) is due a revamp, and is getting one in Hannover as others have pointed out. The new architecture will also allow for the mail, calendar, contacts, and all custom applications to have a brand new look, feel, and new functionality. You won't find a single Notes user, even those that love the current Notes that aren't excited about this. So your follow-up story could easily be "Notes community excited about changes coming..." but I guess that would not get as many readers.

1. 38  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 2/9/2006 7:51:36 PM

   Charles, don't you worry about me. I can defend myself. :-)

1. 39  Bob Balaban  | 2/9/2006 8:24:24 PM

   @35: Charles, I was going to stay out of this one until I saw your reference to Eudora as a UI that "people" like better than Notes.

   Well, I am a person, and while I will admit to a strong bias in favor of Notes/Domino (having had a long professional association with the product; I was a developer at Lotus/Iris for quite a while), I also have some real-life experience with Eudora that I thought I would mention here.

   When I set up my consulting company in 1997 I needed a POP3 mail reader other than Notes as my main business mailbox. I chose Eudora. I've been using Eudora rather extensively for about 8 years, and I think it sucks.

   While the UI does have some features I like, in general I find it clunky, slow and unreliable (it crashes a lot, sometimes corrupting one or more local mail folders at the same time). The fonts are terrible, the icons meaningless, and half the features are poorly designed and difficult to operate.

   And, did I mention that it crashes a lot? You might say that's not relevant to your point, because you were focused on UI in your article, not functionality. Fair enough, but I find that when Eudora crashes it has a rather unfortunate impact on this user's interface. Ditto the mail folder corruption.

   Notes, on the other hand, seldom if ever crashes in normal use. And in my 18 years' experience with the product I can recall only 1 episode of mail database corruption, and that was more than 10 years ago.

   And I like the Notes UI just fine. Is it "slick" and "cool"? I don't really know if it is or not, nor do I care. Are there things I would change? Yes. Do they prevent me from getting my work done? No. Is there any other collaborative software product that supports not only my email needs but many of my mission-critical applciation needs as well? No.

   Supposing I wrote a travel feature for The Guardian pointing out how millions of (unnamed) people hate London? There's dirt on the footpaths! There isn't a pub worth drinking a pint at within half a mile of Big Ben! The traffic's on the wrong side of the road! The money's weird (ok ok, the money's UI got better after 1967, no more "shillings", but still!) Crowded! London's UI is terrible!

   Perhaps you get the idea.

1. 40  Turtle http://www.weightlessdog.com/shell.nsf | 2/10/2006 12:35:08 AM

   Bob...

   Two words, man:

   Thunder. Bird.

   I spent many, many years on Pegasus, but David's refusal to open-source a free software product, coupled with the complete lack of a Mac OS client, led me to Thunderbird. I don't use Notes as a primary mail client, and never have, but of course, I could!

   The Guardian is no different than any Usenet dweeb claiming some sort of Nixonian "silent majority" of people who agree with them but for whom identifying information is oddly lacking.

   In RL, when I encounter someone who sees my bumblebee shirt and wants to buttonhole me about how "Notes sucks as an email client," I tell them, "yeah, well, your car sucks as a spacecraft, too, but there are good and bad uses for EVERYTHING."

   For you stray noobs wandering in, let's get this clear, OK?

   NOTES/DOMINO IS A DISTRIBUTED, SECURE DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM FOR COLLABORATIVE APPLICATIONS. One such application that it ships with happens to look like email.

   OUTLOOK/EXCHANGE IS EMAIL THAT PRETENDS TO BE AN APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT. With, of course, an API that will give you diahrrea for a week to ten days and lose the war for the Allies.

   Do we all understand now?

   Thanks.

   Turtle

1. 41  Vinay http://revengeofsmith.blogspot.com | 2/10/2006 1:41:12 AM

   @35, Charles, while I agree that the premise of your article is that the UI of LN is not very good, the conclusions that you draw, and the statements that you make far over-reach that premise. That the UI is not good does not equate to:

   a) it being the world's worst software, or anywhere near it (n number of microsoft products are queuing up outside the Guardian office in protest of being deprived of their deserved title, I hear)

   b) 119 million out of 120 million people hating it. How did you 'garner that perception' from the handful of comments on Jack Schofield's blog? I would really love to hear an explanation for that.

   c) the people who choose a product are not the people who use it. I don't see a basis for that either. The IT departments of companies have a hundred reasons for preferring LN/Domino. Do you not classify them as users? Do you not believe they have a role in choosing the product?

1. 42  Roberto Boccadoro  | 2/10/2006 2:46:23 AM

   @12 - Volker is not hard to understand and I know you personally did not say anything about Notes yet. Maybe my English is not very clear but when I said YOU (capital) it was meant to be an impersonal pronoun, I was not meaning "Volker's opinion". I believe is not ethical to write an article using sentences like "Imagine a program used by 120 million people, of whom about 119m hate it.". If the base of your survey is yourself and maybe "do check against a few people" then I would use a more cautious approach. As I said, that comment in a blog is OK, is a personal opinion, but is definitely not OK in a newspaper. Journalists have a "loud voice" so they should be more careful before writing what can be defined only blatant lies. Now, if someone comes to me with a real survey and demonstrates that 119 out of 120m users really hate Notes, I am ready to retract my last statement :-)

1. 43  Alan Bell http://www.dominux.co.uk | 2/10/2006 3:10:58 AM

   @35 the problem is not at all that it was an article about the user experience, the problem is that it was an article about the user experience in versions released last century. That isn't news. News is stuff out now, or perhaps even stuff not out yet. Notes 4.6/5 is Olds, not News.

1. 44  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 2/10/2006 3:39:16 AM

   Roberto, LOL. I think we can assume that The Guardian did not take the time to ask those 119 mio. They only asked the other 1 mio. And next time to you walk past a UK newsstand, read the headlines. It might come as a surprise, but not all of them are carefully researched. I would still say that 119 of 120 readers prefer newspapers to research journals. But I only asked the other guy with the taped glasses. :-))

   Turtle, you just blew a giant hole in your foot. If a car sucks as a spacecraft (and a spacecraft sucks as car, then what would be my best choice for email, if I take those two shouted statements as the base for my decision?

   Alan, if all goes well, and if Hannover is released, and widely deployed, then news might be a lot better. This stuff looks really promising. I am a little bit concerned because it all runs on a JVM, but if it does work then people will be pleased.

1. 45  Axel  | 2/10/2006 4:51:43 AM

   @Charles:

   1. You published figures (119 Mio) which resulted from wild guessing and not from a survey which honors any scientific standards.

   2. You did not inform that Lotus invested a lot of effort in UI in 6.5/7 and now is even working on completly elevating the UI thing on a new level (client based on Ecplipse technology, which is a sound basis for very user-friendly UI-design).

   I would certainly be a bit angry if customers were laughing and finger pointing at my project when from my side there is allready a credible effort to change things to the better in a comprehensive and credible way.

   3. The mayority of the reactions in this thread are much more characterized by rational arguments and far less by passionate/emotional reactions.

   A fair follow up article would be nice thing.

1. 46  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 2/10/2006 5:30:17 AM

   In an attempt to stop the constant repetition on these comments, I believe that Charles wrote:

   Imagine a program used by 120 million people, of whom about 119m hate it. Sound unlikely? Yet that's the perception one garners in trying to discover whether Lotus Notes, IBM's "groupware" application, is - as readers of Technology blog suggested - the "world's worst application".

   ---

   He didn't actually say 119 million people hated it, he said imagine it. He also presented this as his 'perception', not reality.

   Whilst we may not agree, he's entitled to his opinion and allowed to express it in this. In now way does he claim it's a fact.

   The only fault I see in the quoted passage is his implication that the readers of the Technology blog suggested it was the 'World Worst' application. I believe this to be incorrect. The person who suggested this was in fact the blog author, Jack Schofield and not it's readership.

   Personally, I got the opinion that MS and Sony were the most disliked companies among the readership.

   You're right, Charles didn't express any of the UI work that had gone into 6.5/7 or indeed the 'Hannover' client. This, I can quite believe, is because he's probably never seen a Notes client of these versions; particularly on the Mac.

   Before our phone call, Charles didn't appear to know that you could sync Notes diary/contacts with a cellphone or PDA. He didn't know the keyboard shortcuts were listed in the online help and he didn't really know of any major companies in the UK who were using Lotus Notes other than his own and IBM. Based on this, it would be highly unlikely Charles had seen Notes 6.5 or indeed 7.0

   My main criticism is that the article was based on a very small cross-section of users in his organisation and IT professionals who read the Guardian technology blog. This provided very blinkered opinion.

   I also criticise the speed at which this article went to press. It's not like the seven year old Notes 5 client was 'hot of the press' so I believe sufficient time for an official IBM input should have been allowed. At least the Quickplace user group were kind enough to send Mr. Arthur my way when he started his investigation.

1. 47  Charles Arthur (yes, that one) http://technology.guardian.co.uk/ | 2/10/2006 5:39:13 AM

   "Imagine a program used by 120 million people, of whom about 119m hate it. Sound unlikely? Yet that's the perception one garners.."

   The number isn't a statistic, if you read the sentences. Nor a survey. I'd be fascinated if there are some hard numbers on "user satisfaction" with Notes. Except what do you compare it with? Having separate apps? The only common experience most people have these days is with email. What's the problem with a program that has a fantastic backend having a world-class email front end, for example? Why shouldn't it be able to do that as well as the other stuff?

   What are the stats on what proportion of users are on 6.5/7? That's a key point. Windows Vista is allegedly a wonderful UI. I'm not meeting many average users on it, though, nor seeing remarks from them.

   With respect, the majority of reactions on this thread are based on misreadings of the article. Volker's comments still stand out. He's more rational than any of us.

   Bob's comment on Eudora is interesting. So, Bob, was Eudora imposed on you, and are there no other products which can do the same job? Umm...

1. 48  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 2/10/2006 6:08:17 AM

   @47 - I think we argued the same point there ;)

   As for "What's the problem with a program that has a fantastic backend having a world-class email front end, for example?" well there isn't a problem.

   Notes/Domino complies with more internet and open standards than any other application that I, personally, know.

   In the email context, we have POP3, IMAP, MAPI and SMTP along with their secure SSL equivalents where applicable. We even have, as details on the phone AND in your article, DAMO....Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook.

   Pick a front end...Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Eudora; you can bolt any of them on. But if you want true collaboration you need Notes...and that's why people usually buy it.

1. 49  Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com | 2/10/2006 6:19:39 AM

   @47 Charles,

   As we're now interested in facts, might I point out that you just tried to compare Windows Vista - not yet shipping - with two versions of Notes that are shipping.

   A better comparison would be either to compare Windows XP with Notes R6.5/R7, or to compare Windows Vista with the next-generation Notes client codenamed Hannover.

   As to what proportion of users are on later versions of Notes - it's interesting that organisations using Notes seem keen to stay up to date, rolling out new versions reasoably quickly. I doubt that many people are on R7, but it's only been out for about four months.

   However, there are already production servers in organisations running R7, which means that the client upgrade will be following shortly. And Domino/Notes enjoys a pretty good upgrade rate, so the number on R6.5 will be pretty healthy...

1. 50  Richard Schwartz http://www.rhs.com/poweroftheschwartz | 2/10/2006 6:48:23 AM

   @44: Hannover does not all run in a JVM. The GUI gets funnelled through the JVM on its way to the screen, but most of the code is native.

1. 51  Stuart McIntyre macsfacts.blogspot.com | 2/10/2006 7:01:11 AM

   @49: I am sure that Ed will step in here and quote the numbers regarding those seats that have been upgraded to Notes 6.5 and above. It is by some way the fastest adoption of a new Notes release that IBM/Lotus has ever witnessed in the past.

   This for me suggests a number of things:

   1) There is significant business and end-user value to be demonstrated by upgrading, else the customers wouldn't do the upgrade. Remember R6.0 is still under support.

   2) Customers have confidence in IBM's ability to provide reliable, adaptable and backwards-compatible upgrade paths for Notes users, whether on R4.X, R5 or R6. There is no rip and replace, just a smooth and almost seamless ability to keep up with the latest versions.

   3) This adoption rate for new releases far outperforms the principal opposition for Notes as an email client. I have yet to meet a customer that runs Outlook/Exchange that is completely onto the 2003 versions yet, despite that release being almost 3 years old.

   As I said on my blog, I believe that articles of this kind will only damage the Guardian which purports to be a serious, well-researched publication. If an author is allowed to publish such a badly-researched and error-strewn article on this topic, who's to say that they won't do the same on more weighty issues such as Iraq, political corruption or child-abuse.

   Stuart

1. 52  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 2/10/2006 7:20:07 AM

   OK, OK, do I get to sleep? :)

   IBM's last installed base tracking study for Notes/Domino was done in early Q4 2005, so ND7 had just shipped. At the time, 9% of companies had begun deployment of Notes 7. About 80% were on Notes 6.x (we don't query 6.0.x vs. 6.5.x in that particular survey) and the remainder on R5 (OK, 2% were still on 4.x!).

   It's been at least three months since this data was gathered, and 7.0.1 is now out. When I look at a survey of 80 top installed customers, the majority have started 7.0 deployments and/or are now planning to do so with 7.0.1 out. This is, as was said at Lotusphere, an incredibly fast take-up rate for ND7, way faster than R5 and certainly at pace (or possibly slightly faster) than ND6.

   The problem I have with using the anonymous "Lotus Notes Sucks" website as fact is that it is mostly attacking old issues. Some are from R5. Some others are from Notes 6. But with Notes 7 now shipping for five months, to accept that site as fact is like reviewing a 2005 model year automobile. No, not everyone is buying the 2006/2007 models, but the fact is they are what is currently available. As Dave Delay points out in his reply, one of the issues quoted in the article, auto inbox refresh, was addressed in Notes 6. Even if Notes 7 isn't shipping for Mac yet, it can be reviewed from the perspective of what was done for the Windows release... and the UI work for the next version is public enough to show that IBM is listing to complaints from users like Mr. Arthur.

   I'd like to thank everyone for a mostly professional and civil discourse on this topic. Now I'll return to surfing my Notes bookmarks.

1. 53  Stuart McIntyre macsfacts.blogspot.com | 2/10/2006 7:25:21 AM

   Ed - you need sleep? I'm amazed ;-)

1. 54  Bill Brown  | 2/10/2006 7:25:33 AM

   @47 "We use tinyurl because - guess what - we're a newspaper. Putting full-length URLs in would take up huge amounts of space; tinyurl is a lot shorter, and readers can still type it in. What are you scared of, that we're going to send you to a porn site?"

   So you're saying that because you're a newspaper you are too lazy (or worse) to figure out how to make a link using standard HTML code? And you write a technology column?

   I never know what will trigger the web filters in place here at the office. I do know that some major sites occasionally end up on the block lists and I prefer not showing up on those reports, thankyouverymuch!

   Are you ashamed of where you are linking to? I view tinyurl as an annonymizing technique that can be used to direct a browser to anyplace you want them to go with a misleading description. Doesn't strike me as responsible, open journalism.

   Funny thing is, elsewhere on the Guardian site, I find normal links of highlighted text that show the URL when I mouse over them. Even some of your fellow bloggers at the guardian such as this one: { Link } manages to handle crating links. And that's not even a technology blog.

   And to bring this back to discussing Domino, even its web editor allows you to create hyperlinks without resorting to tinyurl.

1. 55  Richard Schwartz http://www.rhs.com/poweroftheschwartz | 2/10/2006 7:29:12 AM

   @46: Indeed he did present his perception. Does that relieve him of responsibility for then examining and presenting facts? IMHO, it doesn't. What he did was cloak a piece of pure opinion in a veil of objectivity, and that's why calling him on the core statement of his opinion is fully justified.

   He is certainly entitled to his opionion, and he is even entitled present it in an exaggerated way. He used all the right words to set off his opinion, but then proceeded to write an piece that never once challenged any part of that. But he never once challenged the actual validity of the information on the Notes Sucks page, never once challenged the actual validity of Stowe Boyd's claim, and ended with a clear expression of his utter disdain.

   He sprinkled in a few quotes from you and Dave Delay, and then dismisses your remarks entirely by saying that Notes wins praise for administrators -- and implying (by his "most people aren't administrators" remark) that it wins prains ONLY from administrators, and then proceeds to the remark about "a parallel universe where Windows never happened" -- utterly un-called for, and contrary to the fact that the Notes team has often been acknowledged by Microsoft to have been one of the earliest and strongest adopters of the Windows platform. He further dismisses your remarks by citing an anonymous user of an unknown version of Notes saying, essentially, that none of what you said matters because he thinks the GUI is "rubbish".

   It's a skillful piece that leaves the impression with readers that the author researched his opinion, found nothing at all to contradict it, and thus reached a valid conclusion. That's untrue, and it entirely justifies attacking the premise of 119 out of 120 million -- even though it's clearly stated as opinion.

1. 56  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 2/10/2006 7:30:25 AM

   @54 to defend on this one -- he means for the PRINT EDITION, tinyurls take up less space than a full URL. I understand that. But what I'd do if I were them, and what many media organizations do, is implement a tinyurl kind of thing on their own domain -- guardian.co.uk/06/02/09/xyz or whatever.

1. 57  Bill Brown  | 2/10/2006 7:31:42 AM

   @32 url(x) is better because it actually tells you what domain you are going to. Thanks for the tip.

   I like this quote from their faq:

   Q: Why is the ■include domain■ option less prominant than it used to be?

   A: Mainly because we■d like to encourage more usable short URLs, by including domains in more cases than not. This is in the interest of end users of the short URLs, who benefit from having more information about where redirections would be taking them.

1. 58  Richard Schwartz http://www.rhs.com/poweroftheschwartz | 2/10/2006 7:34:57 AM

   Apologies for spelling and grammar in @55. Need more caffeine. Now.

1. 59  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 2/10/2006 8:33:19 AM

   Arthur, assuming that most of the Notes users are stuck with an old version of Notes is the cardinal mistake you made.

   Other than many other "infrastructure" software pieces (Windows, Office, Exchange) Notes and Domino customers have quickly adopted new releases, usually after version x.0.1 came out, which is 4 month after release of x.0.0. The big exception was 5.0, which was perceived as buggy and a difficult update. There were many shops still suck on 4.5/4.6 and many of them went straight to 6.0.

   Today many customers have good provisioning systems for client software and they swiftly upgrade as newer versions of Notes/Domino come out. The update is usually pretty simple, most if not all older applications continue to run.

   In conclusion: Lots of people benefit from the many improvements in 6.x over the 4.x and 5.x GUI which your observations are based on.

1. 60  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 2/10/2006 8:51:24 AM

   @57 - I think you'll find that Tiny URL was only used when necessary to truncate some of the very long web addresses. Did you notice that my www.lnug.org.uk URL wasn't shrouded by tiny URL in the article?

   If it's ok with you, I think this debate is a little out of context on Ed's blog and I feel you should write a letter to the Guardian directly if you have an issue with the use of their URL presentation.

1. 61  Dravid  | 2/10/2006 9:10:52 AM

   [47] - If you apply the correction from the post [59] & take Ed's stats into account it appears that 119/120 is actually 24/120 :)

1. 62  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 2/10/2006 9:29:15 AM

   There are several other places where this discussion is taking place, too...but only this morning did I find Charles Arthur's blog.

   { Link }

1. 63  Charles http://technology.guardian.co.uk/ | 2/10/2006 9:42:04 AM

   Ben, thanks for making the point about tinyurl. I know, some people have trouble believing that we're not purely virtual..

   Ed, thanks for the data about companies.

   How does that translate into users? <i>At the time, 9% of companies had begun deployment of Notes 7. About 80% were on Notes 6.x (we don't query 6.0.x vs. 6.5.x in that particular survey) and the remainder on R5 (OK, 2% were still on 4.x!).</i>

   I'd be interested to know what the user numbers are at those versions. In my experience, small organisations tend to migrate faster to any new app, because there are fewer penalties of all sorts associated. (And it'd be interesting if you could show us the data with and without IBM, which will be a special case.)

   I'm shocked - shocked! - at people assuming that number of companies == number of users just because it would fit their existing assumptions.

   Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for an average end user to stand up and praise Notes. Honestly, I am. I have Technorati and Google Blog Search scouring the Net as you read this...

1. 64  Charles http://technology.guardian.co.uk/ | 2/10/2006 9:50:12 AM

   ..and I'll just add: users at Reddit haven't stood up for it yet. See comments at

   { Link }

   ..which once again backs up the user/admin split.

1. 65  Charles http://technology.guardian.co.uk/ | 2/10/2006 10:10:27 AM

   and another user experience:

   { Link }

   Though this was "years ago". Quote: "Replication alone was a huge waste of productivity, especially from a hotel room over dialup." This from someone who was trying to build collaboration software over the web.

1. 66  Brian Benz http://www.softwaresoapbox.com | 2/10/2006 10:14:18 AM

   How to respond to this article:

   -Find comments critical of the Guardian.

   -Post this:

   "Imagine a newspaper read by thousands of people daily, most of whom hate it. Sound unlikely? Yet that's the perception one garners in trying to discover whether The Guardian, One of several UK "Newspapers", is - as several commenters on the blogosphere suggested - the world's worst newspaper.

1. 67  Dravid  | 2/10/2006 10:57:25 AM

   "I'm shocked - shocked! - at people assuming that number of companies == number of users just because it would fit their existing assumptions."

   I agree. I was wrong and I am sorry about it. But then, I am shocked at your assumptions as well. [65] somehow doesn't fit well : 1. slow dial up is not notes fault. 2. User Experience is not about UI - not so evident there.

1. 68  Rob McDonagh www.CaptainOblivious.com | 2/10/2006 10:59:42 AM

   Cross-posted on Charles' blog:

   Charles, in the interest of fairness, can you explain why you want to debate the usability of Notes R5 (1998! It■s 2006 now!)? Seriously, *should* we expect to see an article complaining about Windows 98? Do you still use OS 8 (9 came after Notes R5) at work?

   I won■t argue the usability of Notes R5 on the Mac vs Notes R5 on Windows, because IBM released it and their intent was for it to be a usable application - and there is no question among Notes geeks - they did *not* release a usable Mac product with R5. But for all your insistence on hearing from real end users, you seem to be unaware that the Mac users of Notes make up a tiny minority when compared to the Windows users.

   Why do you also insist that most users are using R5? Where is your evidence for that? You ask for evidence that people have upgraded to a more current release as though the proper expectation would be that most people would not, while simultaneously maintaining that Notes is forced on users by their IT staff. Speaking for the IT staff, there■s no way in Hades that we leave outdated versions of Notes around unless we have absolutely no other choice. It■s too critical to too many of our business processes, and the updated features are too powerful and effective. Yes, from OUR perspective, but we■re the ones forcing the updates out. Or so you maintain. Consistency of logic, please?

   The final question is almost to obvious to type, but in which parallel universe do people who *don■t* hate a product leap to its defense? Surely you■re aware of the inherent bias in every surver, where you only garner extreme responses. Oh, sure, people who *love* a product will respond, but those people tend to be power users. In the Notes world, when you■re a power user, you quickly become a developer because it■s so easy to build a Notes application.

1. 69  Rob McDonagh www.CaptainOblivious.com | 2/10/2006 11:02:44 AM

   Hm, look, Windows can't handle copying and pasting apostrophes from one text field on the internet into another text field on the internet without mangling them. Quick, must write an article about Windows poor support for text.....

   /snark

1. 70  Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com | 2/10/2006 11:17:25 AM

   @64, @65 - Charles...

   Users at Reddit seem somewhat likely to be "Web 2.0 Wonders". This is another Digg, which was another Slashdot.

   Look at the articles they submit. Do they look like the average end-users you're saying we're not? I don't know about you, but I'll have difficulty finding a PA in my organisation who doesn't think LISP is a speech defect... (No offence intended to those with lisps, by the way.)

   And your second example - comment 65 - is a wonderful short note about replication. No details, except it was over hotel dialup. It sounds to me to be more likely that this was about dialup connection speeds than anything else.

   What confuses me most of that the other comments made there insinuate that this "user" is actually a web developer of some kind. Which is amusing - you'd think that he'd be aware that with no connection to a server, he'd have no access to his data. Unless he has something like replication with a local replica of his data - one of Notes' big advantages. So I can't figure out why this is a waste of time - the purpose and benefit obvious. But then, as I said, this is a comment strangely devoid of detail.

   Of course, you and I are at loggerheads. All your points seem out of context or out of date, and all mine are tarnished by the fact that I'm an administrator, not an end user.

   I'm not wishing to attack you, just to make sure that the debate occurs on a level playing field. So you can feel free to make the same criticisms of myself when I praise Notes. But don't dismiss me as an Administrator and then trot out other administrators or developers with negative comments - either we all have something constructive to say, or we don't.

   Personally, I can see why people have this perception of Notes. After the dot-com bubble burst, companies stopped upgrading software. That left people on older versions for longer than they'd like. (This ties in with you comments about numbers of people vs organisations, by the way - many large organisations are going straight from R5 or R6 to R7, because it made more sense to skip R6.5. So there won't just be small dynamic companies going straight to R7, there will be some really big ones as well.)

   I work in an organisation that has some hostility to Notes from some users. Mostly ones we acquired in a merger, who used another product. Your article has been pinned up, with great glee, by some colleagues of mine on the notice board in IT.

   Yet I still have users that like Notes. Especially since we moved to R6.5, which was very well recieved.

   The problem here is that your article isn't going to help the negative perception that a few of my users have - a perception which mostly revolves around the fact that Notes isn't what they're used to. You know as well as I do that bad news travels faster than good, and that one disgruntled person does more damage to a reputation than a satisfied person does good for it.

   And that's why you might be seeing a little robustness from administrators and developers who blog. We are, in many ways, the people best placed - most knowledgeable and experienced - to make corrections and to help you write a decent fair article. But all we're seeing from yourself is quotes from the wrong people (anonymous users or developers/administrators of other products) and issues that have been long solved. We understand why you might dislike Notes, but you can't expect us to like what you say. ;-)

   So please understand our frustration. We don't mean to seem like a bunch of attack dogs - we're just trying to make sure that there's a level playing field on which a reasoned debate can occur.

   And finally, kudos to you for venturing in to the lion's den. Hopefully we can reach some kind of understanding that we'll be comfortable with. :-)

1. 71  Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com | 2/10/2006 11:22:41 AM

   Oh, and Ed...

   Sorry for the long comment. And thanks for responding so quickly to the subtle nudge for upgrade stats. ;-)

1. 72  Ben Rose http://www.jaffacake.net | 2/10/2006 12:04:11 PM

   Charles, another perspective if I may.

   It was clear at the time of the last General Election that the average man on the street thought we had the 'worst Government in the World'. We'd supported the Yanks in the Gulf War...fuel prices were through the roof...house prices unattainable by first time buyers...we'd let too many immigrants into the country etc. etc.

   So, we came to the election and man on the street expressed his views..."i ain't gonna vote for them...they're the worst in the world, I've had them forced on me for 8years".

   So when it came to result time, who won? Labour got re-elected.

   The reason? Man on the street was right, he didn't vote for them...but he didn't vote for anyone at all. He fails to understand democracy or how the system works. It's the thinkers that did the real voting. Those that recognised that whilst petrol wasn't cheap, their mortgage was at a record low and half that under the last goverment. Inflation had also halved and unemployment also at a record low.

   The fact is man on the street just doesn't understand and never will, just as Joe User doesn't understand why people buy that Lotus Notes thing. But underneath, the men and women who are casting their vote and not standing on a soapbox are the real winners and get the product that best fits the requirements...regardless of what it looks like on the outside.

   There's one phrase that fits here..."never judge a book by it's cover".

1. 73  Dan http://techandother.blogspot.com | 2/10/2006 12:51:18 PM

   In all fairness, I could use the same reasoning to say that in my 2006 work environment, the operating system and peripherals are terrible for my needs.

   Of course, I would note later that I am on Windows 95 trying to use Photoshop, and am printing on greeen-and-white-bar "computer paper".

   Seriously, you can make a case against any product by using a previous version and claiming it "sucks" because it's difficult to use for modern tasks.

   This critique, much like many other on Notes and other software, is like saying cars "suck" in collisions, because a '41 ford doesn't have airbags.

   I can understand an end user's frustration with a product if the IT staff refuses to update the software to match business processes, but this shows that the staff "sucks", not the product...

   After all, why do you think Lotus has such a strong commitment to keeping their product updated, in accordance to emerging business processes?

   *So it stays relevant to what people are doing*

   If you refuse to update the tool, but try to update the business process, *of course* there will be problems...

   This seems fairly obvious. By the way, shouldn't software reviewers be compelled to use the laest version of the software they are reviewing? Seems like a no-brainer.

1. 74  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 2/10/2006 1:25:18 PM

   SO Charles asked about the breakdown of USERS on R5 vs. companies. IBM only tracks companies at an aggregate level, so there's no magic calculator I can run to translate that into number of users. But.

   I just looked at a list of 86 of the top (=biggest) Notes customers. IBM is NOT on the list. Of those 86, only three (3) are still on R5. One of those is planning to start an upgrade to Notes/Domino 7 next quarter. Two others on the list are deploying 7.0 already -- one is finished. The rest -- 6.5.x (one is on 6.0.x).

   So, I can't mention these particular customers by name in public, but add them up, and they represent millions of Notes users on 6.x -- consistent with the overall market trend.

1. 75  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 2/10/2006 1:27:39 PM

   Now the question becomes -- why hasn't my point from @52 above, or Dave Delay's point from comment #19 on Charles Arthur's blog { Link } , been addressed? I believe the assertion is that complaining about Notes R5 is relevant because many users are still using it. I don't have any market data that says so. Heck, parts of the Guardian aren't using it. So, now that we know that the vast majority are on a much later (3-5 years or more) version of Notes, can we talk about what's great in Notes 7 and beyond, and stop giving credibility to those that write about Notes experiences of the past?

1. 76  Doug Bruce http://www.welldynamics.com | 2/10/2006 3:51:57 PM

   waves hand - 15 servers in 5 countries and 400 users in 19 countries around the globe successfully deployed with 7.0, and upgrades to 7.0.1 start this weekend on production servers.

   we aren't a large company, but with ONE network administrator to cover the globe, it's a feat we could not even hope to accomplish with the competitors products (we know because our sister company is trying to update from Outlook 2000 to 2003 AND upgrade Exchange from 5.5 to 2003)

   i started as a notes user with R4, and had Outlook 97 for email. Whilst the outlook interface was great, our experiences with Outlook 97 and the shear instability of the product made the choice clear cut.

   when we have a new employee join the company, we always have to fight the 'Outlook is the best interface' argument. my counter argument is fairly direct - "If it's so great, why don't the rest of the Office products use it. Oh yeah, because Outlook is for email, and nothing else."

1. 77  Bob Balaban  | 2/10/2006 8:24:52 PM

   @47 Charles, you asked how I came to use Eudora. I picked it! Not after doing a lot of research, or anything. I was a 1-person company, so I had the luxury of ignoring my "IT dept." and using whatever I wanted. I picked Eudora because I saw an interview with the guy who wrote it on PBS and liked the idea that he'd named it after a novelist.

   To your question "are there no other products that can do the job?": In 1997, Notes 4.6 (then the new version) could not deal with "normal" POP3 internet mailboxes as well as Eudora could. I had tried OutlookExpress for a while, but it crashed too much to be useful. So I picked Eudora. It crashed less than OutlookExpress, so I gritted my teeth and kept using it.

   Were I making the same decision today, there's no question that I'd be perfectly happy using Notes for both Notes email and POP3 email. My requirements haven't changed, but Notes has evolved and improved in that area (as in many others), and Eudora has not.

1. 78  Axel  | 2/11/2006 1:42:22 AM

   Have no interect to become new pol.cor.Robespierre of internet discussion.

   Nevertheless.

   I find interesting that here's so much FUD defension in this thread. And on the same time other platforms are attacked with well known prejudices.

   1. "Web 2.0 Wonders":

   Can be easily interpreted in a pejorative way.

   Web frontend development is serious engineering work. For example look at Doco or Prototype library.

   2. "I am a little bit concerned because it all runs on a JVM"

   These days most Java bytecode is converted to native code by JIT compiler. I've done a bit Swing programming lately and even this is fast, these days. Performance issues of java apps can't often be attributed to the language. For example, there were many questionable design decisions in EJB 2.0 api.

   My work practice looks different, btw:

   I type pure maschine code. Instructions are simpler and the code generated by those modern compilers is simply to ineficient.

   Don't want to start new fud discussion, because I am tired of it. Just wanted to mention. :-)

   At the same time IBM is open to all flavours of plattforms. Websphere and Geronimo. Php. Derby and DB2. Support for jarkarta and web 2.0 initiatives. And of course: ONGOING COMMITMENT TO DOMINO: To name a few (last one of course most important).

   IBM way might be more intelligent then discuss fuss.

1. 79  Philip Storry http://www.not-so-rapid.com | 2/12/2006 10:39:38 AM

   @78 Axel,

   My reply is a little too long, so I moved it into a blog entry:

   { Link }

1. 80  james governor www.redmonk.com/jgovernor | 2/14/2006 7:21:23 AM

   well if you will introduce a "blogging platform" that requires IBM Workplace authentication to run what do you expect?

1. 81  Mait Maripuu  | 2/14/2006 12:11:45 PM

   Almost all mainstream software applications with large user base could be criticized at some point. There is no such kind of thing like 'one size fits all' in modern software world.

   I would ask to look the issue in a broader context. Look the tone of an article (Guardian)- it does not fit into the paradigm of good inependent press ethics like Ed has already pointed out earler. Think of who would like to see Notes dead behind the scenes? Timing?

   Instead, I would not put so much heat on 'how bad is Notes' issue although there is a positive said too, actually, this kind of brainstorming is a good and valuable feedback for Notes developers (IBM among others) to improve Notes in the future.

1. 82  Gavin Bollard http://dominogavin.blogspot.com/ | 2/15/2006 2:42:26 PM

   Strangely enough, they DO have a point...

   It could be true that a lot of users hate it. It's certainly true that it's loved by Admins.

   On a similar note, Most people I know HATE Microsoft Windows. Of course, most Admins hate that one too.

   One thing I'd like to see IBM do would be a clear survey of Current-Version users (ie: 7.0) asking them what they would like to see improved. I know that I've never been asked. I think it would generate a lot of interesting feedback and potential improvements for Hannover.

1. 83  Kevin Hansen www.dominokeys.com/blog | 2/18/2006 3:47:18 PM

   The Lotus Notes Sucks website inspired me to write a multi-part rebuttal. Enjoy:

   { Link }

1. 84  Adeleida http://www.adeleida.co.za | 9/17/2006 8:34:42 AM

   I can't believe it... the CEO of one of my clients just forwarded me an email sent to him by a staff member, quoting this Guardian article (yes, half a year later). And how nice it is to just check the date of the Guardian article, then check Ed's blog for the same date and forward him the url. What was interesting was that this particular client does not even use Lotus Notes email, they have a single application on Notes and they just see this application's front end. Yet, they see "Lotus Notes Sucks" and "119 million users hate Notes" and that is all that sticks. That, I believe, is FUD.

1. 85  Brendan Dodds  | 10/27/2006 6:16:31 AM

   Just to add a comment from a 'regular user'. I used to work for a major global company, in a sourcing dept, and worked on a project to see if I could shift them from Exchange/Outlook. It's an over-priced system, with a flawed backend.

   Recently I took a sideways career step and am now working on global intranets for another large global Fortune 500 company, using Notes v6.5. Ask real end-users here what they think of Notes, and they'll either tell you they hate it, or that they have no experience of any alternative.

   The reality is that most users spend their days in email and calendars. In my view both apps are inferior to freeware products widely available. A strong opinion? Certainly. It's because that opinion is left to fester, growing in cumulative magnitude each day. Every day I spend hours labouring over a tool with a poor non-standard UI, with error messages and operational logic that drives me slowly crazy. The constant use of a product means simple things build up in a user's mind until they actively hate a product.

   Example: Today I tried in vain to edit a view. Can't do it. I cannot figure out how to edit a view. This is a very simple task, right? I would expect, in any modern mouse-driven operating system and software, to right-click the view and click 'edit'. But this brings up an editable version of the email I last looked at. I check the non-stand help files, and it tells me only how to rename the view, or create a new one. I could click 'design', but this brings up some kind of cryptic folder customisation window, and not a view editor. So I try searching in google, and all I find are critical comments from annoyed users, and Notes followers on the defensive. It's reassuring to find I'm not alone in struggling to work out how to do basic tasks.

   Meanwhile, I still can't edit a view. I have a BA and an MSc in Computer Science, specialising in HCI/UI design, but I cannot edit a view. So I'm going to delete it and create a new one. This is a small problem, but coupled with the many other useability problems I face every day, it becomes infuriating. It costs me hours every week in lost productivity, and genuinely takes the edge off a job I otherwise enjoy.

   I understand that email isn't the reason for the existance of Notes. I have no doubt that it is a robust and useful back-end for RAD and database admin. But most users need email and calendars. And, in my humble opinion, Notes is not fit for this purpose. Given the choice, and in a world without company policies, I'd automatically forward all my email to gmail, thunderbird or one of the many other dedicated email tools. I'd much prefer to use the calendar in Outlook, which I found to function perfectly well, and with far less effort on my part.

   I don't know if the Guardian is right or accurate in speculating that there are 119m users who hate Notes. But there's at least 1.

   PS How in the world do you edit a view?

1. 86  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 10/27/2006 7:21:10 AM

   Brendan, a few things:

   (1) What's a "standard" help file? (I assume that you meant to say "non-standARD help files"). I wasn't aware such things existed. But anyway, you know Notes has a help file, so what stopped you using it?

   (2)... because if you did, you would see *exactly* how to edit a view (Hint: Go to Index. Select "Views". In the resulting list, note the entry "Customizing". Click on it to seen an item entitled "Customizing the information display in a view".

   (3) How do you edit views in Outlook, Thunderbird, et al?

1. 87  Brendan  | 11/9/2006 10:01:05 AM

   Ben:

   (1) One that has a familiar layout and does what I expect it to do, first time. It wasn't actually an attack on the Lotus help feature - it compares fine to other software. Thanks for pointing out my spelling error - I'll be more careful in future.

   (2) That just lets you re-order the columns; that's just customizing the layout of the view. I need to edit the view itself, e.g. change the criteria for what it actually shows. As far as I can tell, to do this you have to delete the view and create a new one, with the amended criteria.

   (3) In Thunderbird you click 'view' > 'customize'.

   I much prefer Thunderbird's use of views - it's simpler, more intuitive and more effective. It also supports labels, something I think is sorely missing from Notes.

   Outlook doesn't support views. Score one to Lotus. But I was discussing Notes, not other software. Views are a powerful tool, and it's great Notes supports them. But I would like to be able to edit them.

   Unless I'm wrong about something and you want to put the record straight, let's respect the blog and conduct any further debate on a forum or by email.

1. 88  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 11/9/2006 1:11:21 PM

   No need to go off-line, I just need to correct your assumptions:

   You *can* edit views in Notes (I'm going beyond simple customisation here), but you can only do so if you have the appropriate access rights (e.g. typically an end-user won't be able to edit the main "Contacts" view in a server directory -- and that is as it should be!)

   Also, you can create private views in pretty much ANY database, for your use only, which can be defined as you see fit (Selection criteria, columns, styles, the whole nine yards).

   Oh, and no need for any deletion / re-creation.