Lotus Vista?
by Volker Weber
I discussed the Notes client with Andrew yesterday, and he beat me publishing my own observation: could the Notes 8 Eclipse Client (IBM calls it Notes 8 Standard Configuration) be Lotus Vista? Good looking, but kind of a resource hog, and sometimes a nuisance?
A lot of people don't want to or can't move to Vista, and still, there are quite a few people who really like it.
Comments
Vista runs on Linux? :)
Elijah
That is a good question. I run Notes 8.0.2 on a 4 year old R52 Thinkpad with 1 MB of RAM and I don't have any problems with it. Fast enough for me at least. Sure it takes a while to start up in the morning when XP hasn't finished to start, but not worse then ND 7. There are a few annoying bugs though.
I would not use it for mail only, that is for sure. If I needed only a mail client, NotesBuddy would be my choice.
The worst Installation of ND8 I have seen when anti virus apps try to check all the java code in the zip files. That slows ND 8 down a lot. Installation takes hours and it runs very slow. Runs a bit better, when the file checking option is off.
I do not agree with that at all. See my comment at Andrew's site.
Notes is not a resource hog (since 8.0.2).
And I cannot understand why people cried for a good looking UI since years, and now since they got it they are whining about the resource costs.
But when a new MS Office needs more resources, that's perfectly fine for everyone. When a new MS Exchange server needs completely new 64 Bit hardware, that's fine. When the next video game needs a new CPU, more memory and a new 500 bucks graphic card, that's fine.
But when LOTUS NOTES needs something more, it's a big failure from a those idiots at IBM, right?
Or isn't it so that Notes 8.0.2 brings much, much improvements and more functionality at nearly the same costs than Notes 7...?
I think that the differences between Notes 8 and Vista in this parallel are even more important, especially in the way that the problems have been handled.
But my reply got a bit long, so I put it here instead.
Christian Tillmanns: "I run Notes 8.0.2...and I don't have any problems with it."
Christian Tillmanns: "There are a few annoying bugs though."
Surely that's a direct contradiction in the same comment?
Notes 8 Eclipse is definitely a "Vista" here and won't be getting a thumbs up for roll out until it works a bit better. Performance/resource aren't so much of an issue here, we have good hardware, it's the stuff that simply doesn't work that is the deployment stopper. I've logged more SPRs in 8.x than in any prior release of Notes.
Passport advantage Site number 0007139542 if anybody at IBM with access wants to investigate.
1. Notes 8 didn't break all my old apps.
2. Notes 8 didn't require new drivers (that may not exist) for all of my old hardware.
3. Notes 8 generally improved the existing user experience the old version provided, not causing new "problems" such as "Cancel or Allow."
4. IBM is improving Notes 8 faster than MS is improving Vista.
The only downside to Notes 8 is the additional hardware resources required to run it. But even there, there's a way out:
5. If you REALLY can't handle the resources, IBM left you the Basic client. Did Vista come with a "Click here to Install Windows XP" option?
Yes, what Erik said!
The improvement from 8.0.1 to 8.0.2 was great.
Everybody wants Lotus to be more open to include all technologies and platforms and the best way to do that, I think, is with Java platform like Eclipse.
Having said that...we haven't rolled it out yet so don't know what kind of user responses we will get.... or if we will use the basic version only for our Citrix users...
@ Ben Rose
You got me there. But I think my bugs have something to do with the constant upgrade since ND 6. I never really made a completely new install. I posted my bugs in the forum and they don't seam to be common. But I do not have any crashes. Performance wise I have no problems and 8.0.2 is way better then the two releases before.
Everybody I know that uses Vista is constantly complaining about it.
What I see as a real problem for Notes in the future is how to keep everything working when I upgrade. Every time some things get lost. For example the install option for plugins or sametime communities. A new install would take me quite a while to get everything working again.
@Christian: are you serious? Reinstalling notes (and getting it "everything working again") is a matter of 20 minutes.
1. move your /data directory and the notes.ini
2. uninstall notes, if you like you can reinstall windows, or clean up registry, or whatever tactical weapons you else like .-)
3. install notes from the download file
3a. the installer takes approximately 6 to 10 ok clicks and 10 minutes or so of files copying.
4. move everything from your old backup /data to the new one, besides *.ntf's
4.a merge the old notes.ini with the freshly installed one (optional)
4.b run local fixup -f, compact -C, design, updall -r tasks against your /data directory (fully optional)
5. start the new notes client -> done.
have I missed something?
2.a: Disable McAfee AV unless you have hours to kill (8.5 is bad; 8.7i is Horendous)
Install takes 10-15 minutes without it; 30-40 with 8.5; and 2 hours or so with 8.7i
Turning off scanning of JAR files in McAfee helped but it is still bad. We're evaluating if we have to change AV vendors.
The Difference in performance between 8.0.1 and 8.0.2 is huge. Anyone still on 8.0.1 and complaining about performance needs to upgrade.
