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Mac OS X Version of Lotus Notes 6
NadizPicR writes "Lotus released the first Mac OS X beta for its Notes Domino messaging and collaboration system client. Version 6.0b1 also features improved toolbar handling. I just downloaded and installed it, and it seems to be an excellent implementation." Do people still use Lotus Notes? Honestly?
Lotus released the first Mac OS X beta for its Notes Domino messaging and collaboration system client.
Should read: IBM released the first Mac OS X beta for its Notes Domino messaging and collaboration system client.
Still better than Novell GroupWise.
Does anyone have any screenshots?
This is pretty exciting since, with MS Office, it makes the mac a pretty viable alternative in the non-creative workplace. I worked as a designer and it was always immensely frustrating to either have to also use a PC, or simply be excluded from some enterprise apps and productivity tools.
I noticed though that there is no Domino Server for OS X. pity. A Dual G4 domino server (with Gigabit ethernet of course) would kick serious butt and would make an all mac office a distinct possibility.
I dream of a day when Oracle server runs on OS X and Apple has an easy to use data access framework a la ADO.net (with Postgres support): Rack mounted OS X application & database servers.
Oh my god, somebody get me a towel.
-a
"The plural of anecdote is not data." -- Roger Brinner
>The email client has to be the worst that I have ever used.
That is the admin's fault. Notes allows you to do a lot of customization so that it serves your needs, but once you do, it's pretty much essential. Of all the groupware I've seen it integrates best with heterogeneous data stores, custom applications, and workflows.
I agree that the e-mail is sucky compared to Outlook 2002 or mozilla or kmail or any number of other clients. This can be remedied though by effective use of custom domino applications and templates.
-a
"The plural of anecdote is not data." -- Roger Brinner
IBM uses Notes for it's inter-office email, calendar, databases, etc. In a word, it sucks.
_sig_ is away
The company that work for used to run Exchange 5.5 with Outlook 98/2000. It was an adminstrators dream. Everything just worked. Then, we got bought out, and our parent company told us to switch to Lotus Notes, which is what they use. WE HATE IT! Roaming users don't really exist in Notes. A name change involves us to go to the machine itself and change many settings. It also kills any computer that doesnt have more than 64MB of RAM. Lotus Notes blows. It's sad to see such a crapy program corrupt such a beautiful OS.
I've been using this client for about 2 weeks since it was released, and aside from a few small crashes, it's been running solid. The main problem is that when it freezes and you kill it, you have to reboot your Mac in order for it's database to be unlocked, (or i haven't figured out what else to do), which is kinda dumb, this being BSD.
The aqua interface isn't too aqua - it's mainly a wrapper around the R5 design with the exception of the dialogues, but all in all is just as easy to use.
Do people still use Lotus Notes? Honestly?
/. flamebait. Notes has a huge installed base in big financial institutions and other sectors where security and IBM are important. My employer, with over 10,000 staff, is currently migrating everyone to Notes from a mix of mainframe mail and POP3. 2000 users are to be migrated this weekend.
This is just
Now, I'm a Free Software bigot, so I hate Notes for being proprietary. And I hate the odd GUI for being... well, odd and buggy. But Notes has no real competition in terms of features and security. It's also impressively cross platform (on the server side, anyway).
It's really in a class of it's own. Of course it's still used.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
People seem to think that no one uses Lotus Notes/Domino these days. I think I remember seeing some numbers presented on Lotus Sphere '02 where thay claimed to have ~51% of the market for groupware products in Europe. I can't find that data right now. But I searched for Lotus Domino at InfoTech Trends. The script returned the following forecast number of seats for Q4 2000 (you have to pay for information newer than that):
00Q4 - Forecast number of seats for groupware/messaging, by program.
Seats (mil)
Software 1998 1999 2000
Lotus Domino 34 55 65
Microsoft Exchange 24 44 58
Total 58 99 123
Unix based solutions obviously isn't included in this survey. But I think it clearly shows that Notes/Domino has a quite large market share.
IBM shops often use notes, since they already depend on IBM as a vendor. I know Kaiser-Permanente, the HMO, just recently swtiched from MS Exchange (A.K.A. Mmm... sex change...) and Outlook over to Lotus Notes after weathering one too many email viruses. KP uses DB2 on RS6000s running AIX.
Washington Mutual probably uses Notes too. I know they're an IBM customer. At the branch in Cheney you could see the S/390 behind the counter. If you get a look at the screen of a loan officer's PC, it's not running Windows but OS/2. From what I understand, the banks buy the AS400s and get OS/2 thrown in for free.
Casinos are another safe bet, if you want a job working with IBM iron and Notes. The new ones being run by native americans seem to prefer NT/2000, but the "old" corporate-run casinos of Las Vegas mostly use AS/400s for their accounting.
The Associated Press (AP) used to be all-IBM too. All the turnkey systems they used to sell newspapers ran nothing but OS/2, but last year they made a big promotion about they're new commitment to Windows 2000, and shortly after that all our AP systems were replaced by IBM PCs with W2K. They may still may be a place to look if you're looking for a Notes sysadmin position.
Democracy. Whiskey. Sexy. Pick any two.
Is that the guy from "The Usual Suspects"? If so, I'm switching over too. That guy is scary.
Move on. There's nothing to see here.
I certainly hope it has the same well-crafted and intuitive interface I came to know and love last time I worked for a company that used Notes.
*cough*
--saint
The users can roam if you put their Notes IDs in their home directory.
Not that I do that sort of nonsense any more.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
I have a question for those of you familiar with Notes.
Our company is talking about migrating to Lotus Notes, and I'm running Mac OS X. Will I still be able to use Entourage as my email client? I expect I won't be able to access the applications without the Notes client, but is regular POP3 mail typically available?
What exactly is Notes anyway? Is it a proprietary email and calendar system, like the old cc:Mail + some sort of calendar function?
Thanks!
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
I hope Notes for OS X is better than R5 for the Classic Mac OS. I have to use that dreck at one of my client sites, and until I did, I never thought I'd find Outlook/Exchange superior to *anything*.
Talk about the most half-assed port of an app that I've ever seen... what's with the hundreds of 8.3-named files scattered in the Lotus Notes directory? And the user interface sucks terribly, they have done incredibly brain-dead things with the web-browser metaphor.
~Philly
Do people still use Lotus Notes? Honestly?
I frigging hope so I'm a Domino Admin looking for work.
anylou...
While Exchange folks get two days off everytime some douche' cracker dope gets a day off from school Domino Admins go to work not really giving a flying fuck about the latest Outlook Virus b/c we have this little thing call the ECL which translates to security.
I'll admit it though... Developing for Notes is the least intuitive, most ass backwards way to accomplish anything I have ever experienced.
This
who the hell uses Lotus Notes?
But no! The comment by pudge was Do people still use Lotus Notes? Honestly?
Notes has never been used by individual consumers - it's groupware. Pudge is well aware that Notes has at least had a userbase, by implication of the word still.
So it's Flamebait, not Foul.
Novell? Yes. Big companies, again. My company. NDS is 'good' apparently.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.