So today begins the change over from using Microsoft Exchange with Outlook 2003 as its client to a Lotus Notes environment at my place of work.
Having used and administered Exchange for many years I really like it. Add to it the ability to sync over-the-air with devices such as the iPhone and I can’t see why we’d change. It can’t discuss the reasons here, but we are changing.
We are using version 6.5 of the client, and yes I know there is a newer version, but we have to use this version.
So what do I think of Lotus Notes 6.5?
I really don’t like it. It looks outdated for a start. I might as well run it in a Windows 9x client as the improvements of the UI I get with Windows Vista and eventually Windows 7 are wasted. Nothing seems obvious either… I want to select multiple emails (say to delete or move to another folder), so I held down the CTRL key and clicked the emails with my mouse. Did it do what I wanted? No! I eventually worked out how to do this, and thankfully the CTRL + A key combination worked to select all emails.
I’m sure I’ll learn to slowly get used to Notes and its different method of working, but if the decision was left to me, I’d choose Exchange every time!
3 Comments
What is the result ? You and your company satisfy with Lotus Notes ?
ReplyDelete@wgun: I was not involved in the role-out of Notes in anyway other than a user, so was not involved in the decision making.
ReplyDeleteI am therefore unable to comment on what the company thinks of Notes. However, I am able to give my opinion on the software.
Personally, I think Notes sucks big time. I have very limited knowledge of the software and have found the whole changeover from using Outlook to Notes a pain.
My biggest gripes are that the software won't minimise to the tray and that in order to have a notification appear, I have to run an EXTRA piece of software. These notifications don't even tell me much about the email immediately!
The other problem I have is that I am not authenticated to Notes by logging in to Windows. I therefore must type in my password each time I run Notes. I also have to do it for the notification application.
If I had the chance, I'd take Exchange and Outlook back yesterday!
Its worth noting that we are using an old version of the software so many of these "issues" may (or may not) be solved in the latest release. I'd be interested to hear if they are!
The general impression I get from my fellow colleagues is that they are not impressed either, but again I can't really speak for others!
[...] 27, 2009 by Neil Deadman In some previous posts (here and here) I blogged about having to use Lotus Notes at work and some of the things I didn’t like [...]
ReplyDelete