Which Notes client do you use?
by Volker Weber
Ed comments here:
I'm definitely inclined to abandon the basic configuration in the next major feature release. It would help with all sorts of things to move to a pure standard configuration.
Just to reiterate, Notes 8.x ships in two "configurations":
- The "basic configuration" is the native Notes client you have known for years, now version 8.x
- The "standard configuration" is the new Java client with the Expeditor, nee Eclipse, framework
Which one do you use? If you use the native client, when do you plan to switch to the Java client?
Somewhat related: one organization that has both an existing Notes infrastructure and a new Exchange infrastructure lets their users make the decision, usually on a department level: keep Notes 6.5 for legacy apps and get Outlook 2010 or upgrade to Notes 8.x "standard configuration" (without getting Outlook).
Comments
8.5.1 FP3
I have moved all my users (approx. 140) to the "Standard configuration" i.e. Notes Eclipse as of 8.5. We are using Citrix and have relatively new hardware (2 x 2 year old IBM 3650, 1 x 6 month old IBM3650). Speed etc. is OK, hoped it would be better :o) We no longer use Notes classic.
2 cleints, 7.0.3 for speed and client stuff, 8.5.1 for dev (full java one)
All clients get standard and up to date clients always. Period.
That is when we are upgrading them.
If they are stuck in previous versions we work on moving them forward to the latest versions as they may run XP still but n 1 year old machines, the oldest usually is 3 years old, still fine.
Moving from Notes 6.5.x to 8.5.1. Mixed Standard and Basic. Many machines just aren't capable of running Standard with acceptable performance. Upgrading hardware just for Notes is not flying with Management, so mixed it is.
8.5.1 FP3
The "standard configuration" is the new Java client with the Expeditor, nee Eclipse, framework
On newer machines there is no speed issue.
Full 8.5 FP1 Client
8.5.2 Code Drop 5 Standard Client in Mac/Win7 on an Intel i7 8 GB RAM Macbook Pro :-)
We have rolled out the Standard client 8.5.1 FP2. So far only minor problems have ocurred.
@Vowe: Do you have insights how departments in that organization decide?
No ;-)
Which do I use? Standard on Mac of course
Which do most companies I support use? Basic
As of last month, iNotes. Only use the Notes client for development.
Notes 11 - because I can.
Most customers currently use Basic Clients. The two main reasons are hardware / performance and user training.
Basic because of Performance
We start with 8.5.1 Base within Citrix Xenapp 5 for 10.000 Users. Reason is the bad performance of Standard Client (RAM limitation) and we can't go to 64-bit at the moment. The future plan is to switch to the Standard Client when the 64-bit is ready.
There are a mix of clients.
- External users use iNotes (major) and some laptops have Notes standard with local replicas and Directory Assistance.
- Internal users are moving all to stardard Eclipse Notes (as part of migrating users to 8.5.x release).
But there still a lot of users with Notes 7.x with "corporate" mail template (modified).
7.0.4
Moving from 7.0.3 to 8.5.1 FP3 Standard. Works good so far.
I am using Notes Standard latest because that is what you have to use if you need Lotus Domino Designer.
I am yet to see a customer who is totally happy with the standard client but many have accepted it (and they deploy it if they are on Passport Advantage). I guess if more applications are being developed using IBM XPages, the Eclipse client one day will become redundant.
While we still see some customers using the 7 clients, anyone doing upgrades is at some level of 8.5.X and it's the standard client for every one. Now, some users are smart enough to figure out how to run nlnotes.exe on their own, but I don't see any corporate planning around the Basic client with our clients.
8.02 Basic, as it's just so much quicker for the small amount of Notes work I do these days. My customers are all remote, and have varying speeds of network links - I found performing the sorts of small design changes they request was just so painful in 8.5.1 and that I spent most of the time waiting for designer to do things over the network..
@Bruce: Notes 11? You mean the IBM Rich Client Editor for Sharepoint ?
IMHO dropping the basic configuration would be a bad thing. The basic configuration is much faster for me then working with the standard configuration.
If I look at my customers then most of them use the standard configuration (if they where able to upgrade the hardware to cope with the higher resource needs for the standard client).
However... on Citrix most of them use the basic configuration because of memory issues.
On Linux (yes, yes. I have clients using Linux on the desktop) they use off course the standard configuration (nothing else is available there).
What puzzles me is the fact that the standard configuration is so slow on Windows (XP or Vista) while the standard configuration is blazing fast on Linux. Starting the standard configuration client on Linux and on Windows on the exactly same hardware is funny to watch. The Linux clients starts much, much, much faster then the Windows client. I am not sure why this is? Maybe the Windows client is doing some extra communication with the AD (just had yesterday the issue that a 8.0.1 client is not able to start (Notes is crashing) if the Windows user is member of to many groups in AD (I can not reproduce the issue with 8.0.2 nor with 8.5.1FB3)). And working with the standard configuration on Linux is as well faster then doing the same task with the standard configuration on Windows.
Usually using IBM products on Linux (on the desktop) is not the best experience on can have (take the IBM i Access software for example: the Linux edition was probably produced when Moses parted the red sea while the Windows version is produced in this century) but that is not true for the Lotus Notes client. That thing is much better (if you can live or work around the small glitches with fonts and printing and other minor things) and faster then on Windows. I just wish Lotus would finally produce the Domino Designer and Domino Administrator on Linux.
Anyway... I guess it is only a question of time till the basic configuration will be removed from Louts Notes. So I know that whatever I write regarding basic/standard client is futile.
I use Notes and Domino since decades and there where times where everything new in Notes and Domino was something that I had immediately to use. But in the last years I see how I am (hopelessly) sticking to the 'old world' (in the UI world) while Notes is moving ahead. Anyway... things are changing and I have to adapt.
I often read how Volker is saying that Notes/Domino is a complex product and that many clients/users out there don't understand what Notes/Domino is. I have not shared this viewpoint with him but now I do. The product is such a beast that is very hard to explain what it is. And on top of that things around the product are getting harder and harder. This starts with the IBM web page where you need to have a Professor degree in order to find the information/download page/link/whatever on it and continues in every angle and corner that is dealing with the product.
I remember times where simplicity and easy to use (while still being very powerful and flexible) was something that was associated with Lotus Notes/Domino.
I work with Notes (Admin and Designer) since Version 3.x, so about 16 years.
We are currently updating from 7.0.3 to 8.5.1 FP3 Standard. I think there are really cool new features (for users and also for developers due to the new Eclipse framework).
We tested the Standard client for about six months before starting the rollout. The more users working with the new version the more bugs are coming up.
We never had that much problems after upgrading the Notes client to a new major release.
