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Well I did. here is the link. Ms Office Professional. $519.00 from warehouse.com. It does not include project, nor project server, no visio, no MapPoint, or Publisher. All of those cost extra.

Let's do a quick calculation shall we.

Office Pro $519.00
Visio Professional $439.95
Publisher Deluxe 139.95

And sorry warehouse does not sell mappoint and insight does not publish their prices on it so let's presume that mappoint is actually free. What have totaled so far? Why it's over $1098.00.

I am glad you Mr Anonymous Coward posted that message. I now feel proud to have educated not only you but all other slashdot users on where they can get quality Ms products and how much they should expect to pay for it.

For those users who are interested in getting most of the functionality of Office for free or a fraction of the cost may I reccomend the following links.

Open office
KDE/Koffice
The Kompany
602 Office
IBM/Lotus
Corel

Please people don't get ripped off voluntarily it makes you look stupid. I am sure you can put that thousand dollars to better use right? Don't you kids need dentures or a collage education?

Lotus notes

oracle collaboration

Bynari InsightServer.

There are others.

You can read why they don't want to build a native client from the horse's mouth at LDD Today

For those that want to see a Domino Designer for platforms other than Windows, I'd ask a simple question: what do you think DXL is for?

• The user interface stands out amongst the rest of Windows applications, 'cos it isn't a Windows application, at least it doesn't look like the design team have read the Windows UI manual.

• However it does do some nice things, but it still sucks big time as an email client.

Lotus ScreenCam is something you should check out. Also, Microsoft Camcorder is a blatant rip-off of Lotus ScreenCam and came free with Office 97, but I don't recall it capturing audio.

Both of these apps are old enough that they may even run under Wine reliably.

Hey, SAP apparently copyrighted the letter "R", forcing the current release of IBM's Domino product to be called "Release 6" instead of "RNext" as originally planned.

Upon hearing the news, I started waiting for Sesame Street to own the world.

~~

Did anyone else think of Lotus 1-2-3 when they read the "Lotus Nanotech" headline?

and of course this domino. Aptly named as people spend a lot of time setting it up, so it can go down ...

On the sever side the market is much more mature, you can get Oracle on Linux and DB2 for Linux if you want a database. For mail and workflow Lotus Domino is available amongst many others.

IMHO these are either recognised mature products or fulfill a new and/or unique function. A new IM tool does niether of these.

Technically speaking, I'm very familiar with the server platform they use (Domino) and it's extremely secure (NSA, CIA, etc use it). For them to characterize this as a 'break in' is stretching it a bit. Domino provides security from server level down to individual user roles and fields. It's very simple to secure a file or page. Additionally, the standard procedure is to not replicate data you don't want made public to an external box, just in case you forget to secure a document.

For those of you interested in the technical/legal issues of 'publishing' the link, let's not forget that Domino has a few well-known powerful facilities to search and index content on a site... (ie: ?SearchView)

Domino Developers Site
Search URL Syntax
Documentation on R5 Search
Documentation Library

Technically speaking, I'm very familiar with the server platform they use (Domino) and it's extremely secure (NSA, CIA, etc use it). For them to characterize this as a 'break in' is stretching it a bit. Domino provides security from server level down to individual user roles and fields. It's very simple to secure a file or page. Additionally, the standard procedure is to not replicate data you don't want made public to an external box, just in case you forget to secure a document.

For those of you interested in the technical/legal issues of 'publishing' the link, let's not forget that Domino has a few well-known powerful facilities to search and index content on a site... (ie: ?SearchView)

Domino Developers Site
Search URL Syntax
Documentation on R5 Search
Documentation Library

Technically speaking, I'm very familiar with the server platform they use (Domino) and it's extremely secure (NSA, CIA, etc use it). For them to characterize this as a 'break in' is stretching it a bit. Domino provides security from server level down to individual user roles and fields. It's very simple to secure a file or page. Additionally, the standard procedure is to not replicate data you don't want made public to an external box, just in case you forget to secure a document.

For those of you interested in the technical/legal issues of 'publishing' the link, let's not forget that Domino has a few well-known powerful facilities to search and index content on a site... (ie: ?SearchView)

Domino Developers Site
Search URL Syntax
Documentation on R5 Search
Documentation Library

Please note that they are using Lotus Domino as their web server. This means that there are no physical directories that you can chmod or "look into".

The URL contains the Domino internal document ID (similar to a GUID) and I still can not understand how Reuters "guessed" that. Sounds to me like this is an internal leak...

Lotus Domino is far more powerful than Exchange. In features, security and performance. The new Notes 6 blows Outlook out of the water (as if R5 didn't already.)

Lotus Domino is far more powerful than Exchange. In features, security and performance. The new Notes 6 blows Outlook out of the water (as if R5 didn't already.)

There is already a mature, reliable, inexpensive (for professional use), robust groupware platform for Linux that supports open standards...
...it's IBM's Lotus Domino.

I agree with the other posted who mentions that typically, these are tools used by businesses and should be managed by *professional* sysadmins and developers [shameless plug]. KDE can and should create an "Outlook Killer" but I doubt we'll ever see the range and depth provided by something like Domino. They seem to have quite a well-defined plan there, but for those of you who are interested, these are some other great Open Source groupware initiatives for Linux that build on the Domino idea and in most cases extend it (say hi to Nate for me). You may also want to cross-reference this with IBM's Domino Groupware for Linux information at their site.

I really do wish these folks the best of luck.

There is already a mature, reliable, inexpensive (for professional use), robust groupware platform for Linux that supports open standards...
...it's IBM's Lotus Domino.

I agree with the other posted who mentions that typically, these are tools used by businesses and should be managed by *professional* sysadmins and developers [shameless plug]. KDE can and should create an "Outlook Killer" but I doubt we'll ever see the range and depth provided by something like Domino. They seem to have quite a well-defined plan there, but for those of you who are interested, these are some other great Open Source groupware initiatives for Linux that build on the Domino idea and in most cases extend it (say hi to Nate for me). You may also want to cross-reference this with IBM's Domino Groupware for Linux information at their site.

I really do wish these folks the best of luck.

It's an excellent suite. Try it, you'll be amazed! We should spamflood them asking them to opensource it, since it seems that few people want to buy it for US$200 a po) any more. Point out that its popularity would go through the roof, especially after it was ported to Unix/X (ie Linux+XFree and OS/X+XFree).

There is a bit of information out there about some things that started on PLATO that are now pretty much familiar to everyone. IMB/Lotus credit PLATO's "notes" as being an inspiration for Notes/Domino. There is a nice summary of innovations on the system including personal notes (email), multiplayer games, and most importantly "online community," by David Wooley. Brian Dear is also writing a book on PLATO people that also has some good history.

Learning about PLATO makes a nice history lesson for both online gaming fans as well as people working in online education.

It is not often I can sign a note as chris/mfl and an Orion Captain

Lotus Notes design may not be winning any awards, but guess what? As a designer you have FULL CONTROL to modify the UI however you like! While the backend code of Lotus Notes/Domino may be closed, the front end is fully customizable. It supports POP, IMAP, HTTP, SSL, NNTP, LDAP, SOAP, XML, COM, CORBA and more. You can write code against it in scripting languages like Lotus' Function language and JavaScript, a VB like language (LotusScript) that is more OO than VB6 (supports classes and inheritance for example), or write code against it with Java or C. You've got API's into just about everything in Notes as well so you can change whatever it is you dislike.

If you can't give up the Outlook client, Domino supports using the Outlook client against a Domino backend. Granted, native Notes features such as document links do not work in Outlook (because it has no equivalent functionality), but the majority of the features work seamlessly and some are also improved by running against Domino instead of Exchange (security and better support for remote users are two that immediately come to mind).

If you don't want to run an Exchange server or a cluster of NT boxes for messaging, run Domino on practically whatever you want, from big iron to Linux. Let everyone keep the Outlook clients they're used to if it meets everyone's needs, or customize the Notes UI to look and act like Outlook, like the OS Notes developers at www.openntf.org did with Lookout Express.

If you don't like the UI, change it. If a button doesn't work the way you think it should, or you wish it had a different feature, change it. You can.

ducky

You come up with an idea, but only work on it in your head. And it is related to your employment, who should own it?

You should own it.

Of course, if it is directly related to the project you're currently working on, then you'd better make use of your idea by implementing it for your current employer. But that's not because the idea is owned by the employer -- it's because if you don't make use of your idea, you won't be able to complete your project. And completing the project is your job.

If the company owns all ideas that you have while working for them, you can never safely start an independent business. People don't sit in their office and then, one day, decide that they have no ideas whatsoever but should quit their job, go home and try getting ideas. How it actually works is that while you're at work, you have an idea that is not directly related to your current task, or you're not satisfied with your payment or your company's management or something like that. And then you decide "I can do better than this," and start your own business.

It even used to be the case that you could not just start a new business with something related to your previous job. You could even do almost exactly the same thing. Think about people who invented a groupware solution, then decided that they could do better, and invented another groupware solution.

What if, while working for your company, you have a great idea, tell your employer about it and they believe the idea won't work? Don't tell me this doesn't happen, it happens all the time. So you decide to quit and start your own business. One or two years later, your business is a big success. Should it be possible for your previous employer to claim ownership over your business because you developed the idea for them?

I hope not. It would mean you take the risk, they take the profit -- without any investments. Capitalism, huh?

Yea yea... websphere is cool and all, but you gotta try the latest preview release of Domino from notes.net (i mean lotus developer domain #-> whatever...

To add some possible confirmation to that theory:

This site would suggest that the Washington Post has about 3000 users, which is the size of organization specified.

Note that it is, or was a Lotus Domino based system.

Broadly speaking, I would say the Washington Post were the good guys, wouldn't you ?

D.

The title of your post suggests migrating your office OS to Linux, which would be very painful and might actually run some of your employees off...no kidding. If we're only talking about a new Office Suite, then I think Lotus would be your best bet. The Apps are sumilar to M$ Office, the Lotus apps can read all the existing M$ files and the learning curve for your employees would be minimal. I use Lotus apps everyday (123, Word Pro, Freelance) and prior to coming to this company had used nothing but M$ Office. I suffered a bit of a learning curve, but it didn't take long to adapt. The office app that's been the hardest to get used to is Freelance, Powerpoint is easier to use. But there's almost no difference between 123 & Excel and Word processing is word processing...right?

There are certainly some less expensive choice than Lotus, but I think you'll find it cheaper than Micro$oft. Definitely an option you should consider...IMO.

Lotus Sametime

IBM's MindSpan

Sametime works better for meetings, but not for self-paced learning. MindSpan is a "complete" e-learning suite.

Should also add that you can add-in the Lotus/IBM real-time translation stuff (Lotus Translation Components, and you can type in English, and have it render, simultaneously, for whatever the end-user needs. Japanese, German, Portugese, French, Chinese....

Lotus Sametime

IBM's MindSpan

Sametime works better for meetings, but not for self-paced learning. MindSpan is a "complete" e-learning suite.

Should also add that you can add-in the Lotus/IBM real-time translation stuff (Lotus Translation Components, and you can type in English, and have it render, simultaneously, for whatever the end-user needs. Japanese, German, Portugese, French, Chinese....

Outlook has significant problems scaling to the degree a behemoth like AOL-TW demands. It's beyond the almost complete absence of security that makes Outlook a really poor choice in large corporate envornments - Outlook basically falls prey to the same ills as AOL's client software: It's intended originally for ease-of-use over security and scalability.

I have definite biases here (as I prefer corporate mail solutions that run on a variety of platforms, scale out the wazoo, and Just Work), but they're rooted firmly in practical experience (first-hand and otherwise) of replacing 10's of Exchange boxes with several different solutions that actually SOLVED user requirements.

On the user, not the software vendor. IBM goes out of it's way (as does MSTF and.... I can't think of any other business app companies) to let you know if/when there needs to be an update for security. Like this wonderful page: Lotus Security.

Sametime makes use of Java, Javascript, HTML and LDAP, which means it integrates with far more than just IBM/Lotus products. It also links with wireless devices using Sametime Everyplace, and it's part of IBM's e-learning Mindspan suite.

The beta toolkit is available at http://www.lotus.com/beta, which includes the COM toolkit (that's new), the links toolkit, and the Community Server tookit, which is analogous to what Oracle did, if I read Jabber's press release correctly.

Oracle's doing it because IBM has Sametime, which integrates with everything else like, oh, WebSphere, and um, Lotus Domino, and um, QuickPlace.

Just because Jabber is open source doesn't mean that it makes Oracle a better product.

Oracle's doing it because IBM has Sametime, which integrates with everything else like, oh, WebSphere, and um, Lotus Domino, and um, QuickPlace.

Just because Jabber is open source doesn't mean that it makes Oracle a better product.

Oracle's doing it because IBM has Sametime, which integrates with everything else like, oh, WebSphere, and um, Lotus Domino, and um, QuickPlace.

Just because Jabber is open source doesn't mean that it makes Oracle a better product.

I run a Domino server. In fact I run lots of Domino websites. And this "Denial of Service" issue that is reported is really due to Admins who don't know what they're doing.

Any system can try and forward to 127.0.0.1 if it is set that way. There is so much information available at all the normal locations that it is really the Admins own fault. Why they should take it out on somebody who has done as all a superb service is anybodies guess.

Where to look for info:
Lotus
Notes.net
DominoHive
SecurityTracker for Domino

Back when Lotus was thinking about version 4.6, they decided not to release a Mac version. At the time, Apple was sinking fast, and looked like it was going to go bankrupt. Apple recovered, and Lotus responded with verion 5 (aka "R5") for the Mac platform.

Version 4.6.7 was the last client version for any *nix platform. The server version ("Domino") still exists, and has strong support and market share. The client disappeared for several reasons:

There is no server version for BSD, but now that the client has been ported to OS X, it may be on the horizon. It's all about market share.

If you wish to run Notes under WINE, look here and here for instructions.

All this destruction of e-mail for liability reasons thwarts mining e-mail for the purposes of knowledge management, such as can be done by products like Lotus Knowledge Discovery System. With today's high turnover rates, KM is needed to maintain long-term productivity, but evidently legal issues are dwarfing anything like actually earning money by being productive. (Hmm, has a ring of revenue generation by old large companies through patent portfolios rather than innovation, doesn't it?)

Check out solutions available on Lotus Domino. Domino is available for Linux and runs very well, and provides plenty of other services as well.

IBM got out becuase the IOC was demanding too much money. Yes IBM paid all the costs, but the IOC still wanted extra payment.

And the site during Sydney handled 13 BILLION hits in a two week period (synopsis). The IBM search engine provides more links.

And yes, there is a Linux version.

Tim Massey

hmm. I don't think the resources are 'unimaginable', just ridiculously, ridiculously big. A (really) rough back of the envelope type of calculation on what storage resources might be required:

- Let's say a DVD holds 8 hours of acceptable quality video.
- this translates to 15.9 gigs I think? (someone please correct me on the specs if incorrect, I don't even own a DVD player)(what the heck, it'll only be an order of magnitude error or so)
- TV is what, 75 years old?
- Assume there have been 1000 channels in the history of tv, even though there are doubtless more now, but obviously less in 1950.

So 3 DVDs or 48gigs = 1 day of storage for 1 channel.

48gigs* 365 * 75 * 1000
= (hmm, where's that calculator)

1,314,000,000 gigs
=1314000 terabytes
=1314 petabytes
=1.3 exabytes

(I think. Ahem. Please correct any gross errors in translation/calculation. Don't ask me to land the Mars Observer.)

For comparison, George Gilder notes that a study showed that the total traffic for the Net was about 1 petabyte a month. (I know, the real figure for comparison would be, 'how many terabytes does the Net contain?' I don't have time for that search! Anyone?)

Terabyte servers are in use now; it's within the realm of possibility to imagine a million of them. Chuck in the hard drive equivalent of Moore's Law, a breakthrough in holographic techniques, ("Windows 2010 requires a minimum of 1 terabyte of hard disk space...") and hey, you could maybe make some half-assed attempts at this 10 years down the road.

Of course that's just the storage calculation. I've ignored the gross problems of:
-digitizing all the historical stuff on tape
-indexing it all with at least an IMDB-style header of metadata. Full text search would be nice too :-) (hey, a bonus from closed captioning)
-providing adequate last-mile bandwidth so that 200 million americans can surf different tv programs simultaneously (trust George Gilder!)
-the IP issues: how hollywood, the courts, and popular sentiment will interact to drive this thing forward.

For what it's worth, I've basically come to the conclusion that Users don't give a hoot about Exchange/OpenMail/Notes/whatever. What the USERS want is "the Outlook experience".

People point to "usability studies" and "feature reviews" that support their assertions of the superiority of &lt$Platform_A&gt over &lt$Other_Platforms&gt. When you get down to the bottom of the matter, it usually boils down to "I use message collaboration, so I like Outlook" versus "I use work collaboration, so I like Notes".

If your employer is bound and determined to run Outlook (mine is), one option for a Notes/Domino shop is to install the iNotes product along side of Domino...it allows for (basically) 100% Outlook usability, so your users are getting what they want...the aforementioned "experience"...while you get to avoid installing new servers/painful migration/Microsoft Tax/whatever. See Lotus iNotes for a quick run-down on iNotes. To sweeten the pot, the next version of Domino called (imaginitively) "Rnext" should have most of this functionality included. See notes.net/rnext" if you're interested (including beta server downloads for Linux/AIX/Solaris/Sparc/WinNT/Win2K).

With the client delt with, your only remaining problem is now to deal with the relatively few "server" bigots in the equation. While they (I?) am just as prejudiced in their views as the next guy, never underestimate the power of *accountability* to influence the actions of knowledgable people.

don't overestimate it, either!

Web based, which solves the cross-platform bit. Includes a document distiller so that it will render HTML for documents thrown into it, which saves the bother of having to download the attachment. Will render a PDF, realtime, for anything else. Does a lot of other things, too. (Metadata, tracking, revision control, check-in/out, restricted access, ACLs,

http://www.lotus.com/home.nsf/welcome/domdoc

You probably won't find a good, free one, because lots of businesses (like legal departments) are willing to fork over lots of dough for this type of product. Thus there is a demand by paying customers.

For those with no access to the IBM intranet, there are a couple of other links that might help.

here and here

Is it off-topic? Perhaps.
Just in case anyone missed it last time, it was posted...
How to make the Lotus Notes Client run with Wine

The difference between the cathedral and the bazarre is not the presence or absence of project management. This is one of the most misguided readings of Raymond's paper, as he himself makes clear.

What "The Cathedral and the Bazarre" argues (and this is frankly no great insight on Raymond's part) is that good project management doesn't require formal rules, processes, and bureaucracy. Ideally, it is based on talented leadership, shared vision, and a spirit of collaboration. This strategy is not fool-proof, of course, and is perhaps riskier than traditional management. But when it works, it demonstrably produces amazing results.

Maybe this can't work for mozilla. It wouldn't be all that shocking, since mozilla is different from most free software projects: large, built on a traditionally proprietary codebase, run largely by a major corporation. But that's no reason to slam all the projects for which it does work.

The two methods are always combined to a degree, of course. But they are not entirely compatible, so you can't just say "let's do both". Bureaucracy diminishes the importance of a leader, subjugates vision to process, and dampens enthusiasm. So I'll take bazaar management any day.

See: Link to Lotus it has run on linux for some time now.

It is only a matter of time before WINE fixes the rest.

supposedly does Calandaring & Scheduling, supports clients on different platforms, etc.

(there's also Domino, which runs on all sorts of *nixes ... not 'open' by any stretch, but pretty powerful)

Imagine being able to add a new person to a single database and instantly give them the rights that they need to do their job across a network that spans the globe. :) Oh yeah, and it has to support single login.

Sounds much like Lotus Domino. Now there's a security architecture that would work well at the OS level.

Adobe's a member of the BSA.

The BSA has an interesting statement on the DMCA here. This is a response to a Library of Congress rule available here.

Members of the BSA include Adobe, Apple Computer, Autodesk, Bentley Systems, CNC Software/Mastercam, Compaq, Corel Corporation, IBM, Intel, Intuit, Lotus Development, Macromedia, Microsoft, Network Associates, Novell, Sybase, Symantec, and Walker Digital; i.e. most of /.'s favourite hate companies, plus some extras.

These are the guys to line up against. They've been around since the '80s. I suspect that Adobe's lawyers are all BSA stooges. Certainly Adobe's PR department doesn't seem to be toeing the BSA line.

Look, would you use Hotmail to handle your business's mail? So why would you use MSN, Yahoo, etc. to deal with your business's IM needs? And yes, IM is becoming like email and the phone- another tool that people are relying on more and more to share information.

So, if you care about IM for business use, why wouldn't you just pay for it? I only know of Sametime (which is good for inside your organization and connects via AIM externally). This is a tool for businesses and not for casual users.

But someone should listen up here and make a business out of this for people who want a reliable IM service for casual use.

I would think that there are people out there who would pay something for guaranteed reliability.

I can't see how immediately the majority of people will jump directly to the most paranoid inferences anyone could draw from the capabilities of such a product.

I mean obviously whatever evil corporation you work for may choose to abuse this type of product as another way to spy on employees, but be realistic - for the most part companies don't care what you do as long as you're productive and don't cause problems. Sure certain environments are very high on increasing productivity, to the point where washroom breaks are timed, etc, but most places are not like this.

In a less orwellian workplace, these types of products can be excellent tools to facilitate the search for knowledge. Would you know who to call in your company to get some obscure piece of info about how a particular system works? Would your co-workers? Probably not - that's why this type of global content indexing and affinity-mapping can be a great asset. I may not know who to call about the way an ACF2 subsystem on mainframe X is used by web application Y, but I can do a quick search and have someone recommended. I would kill for that capability in my job today - as an enterprise architect we need to know who the movers and shakers are in the company and keep a handle on ongoing projects, and unfortunately 80% or more of them never go in front of any sort of review board, so searching out the stealth projects is a big problem.

As a result, we've investigated a few products in this space - for those who are interested, a couple of other examples are:

Verity K2 Enterprise
and
Lotus Discovery Server