Lotus Notes v4-6.5
I realise now that I am somewhat seperated from the tortuous by-phone technical support life I arduously lived for several years, that there was some pleasure in fixing people's computer problems. Lotus Notes was always the center of my knowledge in those years, with good reason, It is an extremely complex application. Lotus Notes tried to be everything from a mail client to a full blown database infrastructure and repository. The end user wishes to have an email client that is simple to use, the advanced user wishes to have integrated scheduling, meeting planning, to-do lists, reminders, automated and integrated mail forwarding, etc. Lotus Notes is a catchall application that integrates an email client, personal organizer, calandar, etc, but comes off as quite unwieldy to the casual and even the advanced casual user. Above and beyond the basic usable function of managing your day to day commuication and schedule management, the designers integrated a full database functionality, the ability to open and edit many varied types of documents within the client, archiving of both mail and documents, and things like integrated communications with teleconferencing companies to schedule and book conferences for example.
Most people that have never worked for A large 50k plus employee company probably haven't encountered Lotus Notes, as most small to medium sized companies use Microsoft Outlook for their primary mail client and another solution for database management, and yet another for the other needs that come up in business. I cannot pass judgement really on the application itself, but some things are undeniable from my use and support of LN throught the years: 1) it is a worse resource hog than any other application that a person would be expected to have running in the background of a normal business day. 2)whether by the fault of the database designers, the custom template designers, or the developers of the application itself, It requires significant levels of support and has more conflicts with external software than any other application I have encountered. 3)While serving as an email client, a database client, a database backend, and a custom interface into company and intranet applications as one entity, it can run quite slowly in data retrieval and create conflicts within itself that are of a level of complexity that no end user without a lotusscript background could begin to understand. 4)the error codes are extremely cryptic more often than not, which generally in my experience can be attributed to bad code writing by template tweakers. 5)It crashes alot, and more often than not it crashes in a way that isnt clean, meaning the processes dont terminate themselves. In fact, most companies that use LN install a program called Killnotes or usually rebranded as Zapnotes with LN which will clean the dead processes from memory so the machine doesnt need to be rebooted to restart the client. 6)the developers know all this and are laughing thier way to the bank as well as the support and salesman at IBM.
Kind of a random rant perhaps I will finish the thought later.
I realise now that I am somewhat seperated from the tortuous by-phone technical support life I arduously lived for several years, that there was some pleasure in fixing people's computer problems. Lotus Notes was always the center of my knowledge in those years, with good reason, It is an extremely complex application. Lotus Notes tried to be everything from a mail client to a full blown database infrastructure and repository. The end user wishes to have an email client that is simple to use, the advanced user wishes to have integrated scheduling, meeting planning, to-do lists, reminders, automated and integrated mail forwarding, etc. Lotus Notes is a catchall application that integrates an email client, personal organizer, calandar, etc, but comes off as quite unwieldy to the casual and even the advanced casual user. Above and beyond the basic usable function of managing your day to day commuication and schedule management, the designers integrated a full database functionality, the ability to open and edit many varied types of documents within the client, archiving of both mail and documents, and things like integrated communications with teleconferencing companies to schedule and book conferences for example.
Most people that have never worked for A large 50k plus employee company probably haven't encountered Lotus Notes, as most small to medium sized companies use Microsoft Outlook for their primary mail client and another solution for database management, and yet another for the other needs that come up in business. I cannot pass judgement really on the application itself, but some things are undeniable from my use and support of LN throught the years: 1) it is a worse resource hog than any other application that a person would be expected to have running in the background of a normal business day. 2)whether by the fault of the database designers, the custom template designers, or the developers of the application itself, It requires significant levels of support and has more conflicts with external software than any other application I have encountered. 3)While serving as an email client, a database client, a database backend, and a custom interface into company and intranet applications as one entity, it can run quite slowly in data retrieval and create conflicts within itself that are of a level of complexity that no end user without a lotusscript background could begin to understand. 4)the error codes are extremely cryptic more often than not, which generally in my experience can be attributed to bad code writing by template tweakers. 5)It crashes alot, and more often than not it crashes in a way that isnt clean, meaning the processes dont terminate themselves. In fact, most companies that use LN install a program called Killnotes or usually rebranded as Zapnotes with LN which will clean the dead processes from memory so the machine doesnt need to be rebooted to restart the client. 6)the developers know all this and are laughing thier way to the bank as well as the support and salesman at IBM.
Kind of a random rant perhaps I will finish the thought later.