Lotus Notes, why?

[Mblaster]

Can anyone here explain to me why anyone would decide using Lotus Notes is a good idea? I have to use it and work and the feature list is on par with Outlook Express, a mail client given away for free by Microsoft 10 years ago.

On top of the obvious usability flaws, I had an email today telling me that I'm above the vendor recommended number of emails in my inbox, 750. My Outlook inbox has 15,000 emails and there's no performance issues. I can even search all my emails (including other folders, totaling ~40k) in 1 second, whereas the search in Lotus Notes looks like it was borrowed from notepad.

I think IBM must have an impressive sales team, they managed to sell us Clearcase too...

[aidanjt]

Lotus Notes was invented to torment sysadmins and make IT managers coo with awe when they think 'oh my, that sounds impressive'.

[HSK]

To quote a work colleague of mine, "I hate Lotus Notes to my soul".

[Splash]

Everyone who uses it hates it. Some management types like the fact that it's generally cheaper to license on a large scale than Exchange.

[Tattysnuc]

I'm not familiar with notes, but we are just starting to use sharepoint, which was "done" by the same guy who jumped ship from IBM, responsible for Notes. My understanding of Note is that it's a whole lot more than just an email platform, which is basically what exchange is. We're using Sharepoint for our business workflows, reporting and intranet, so I'm at a bit of a loss why someone would hate it's predecessor (and the concept on which it is built) so.

?

[Moby-Dick]

I'm not sure why clients would move to notes at the moment , but I see a lot of notes/domino installs that just wont go away and its not because of mail , its because its really easy to knock together little database driven apps into the interface - these apps tend to gain importance over time. It essentialy a good RDBMS product with a terrible mail interface ( unlike exchange which is a great mail interface with a poor RDMBS behind it - though it has improoved )

I'm at a loss as to why people are still buying new installs on it!

[Jay]

I thought notes had finally died a death? I am amazed people are still using it never mind new installs.

[Moby-Dick]

I thought notes had finally died a death? I am amazed people are still using it never mind new installs.

As a mail client I agree - but for all those little applications that you only discover are business critical when you attempt to decommission the server its clinging on to some enterprises suprisingly well .

[Jay]

As a mail client I agree - but for all those little applications that you only discover are business critical when you attempt to decommission the server its clinging on to some enterprises suprisingly well .

True, the mail system is maybe only beaten to last spot by Scalix... don't get me started on that POS.

[Spud1]

Legacy is the only reason that I can imagine it's still in use, mad to think that people are actually going for new implementations of it!

I didn't know that the same guy behind notes is also involved with sharepoint..explains a lot! I'm still yet to see a useful implementation of sharepoint that's any good, it still mystifies me.

[MaddAussie]

Notes/Domino was orgininaly designed as a document management and colobararation platform wich had a mail client bolted on. The mail client is gash, end of, the rest of it is OK

[Mblaster]

I'm not sure why clients would move to notes at the moment , but I see a lot of notes/domino installs that just wont go away and its not because of mail , its because its really easy to knock together little database driven apps into the interface - these apps tend to gain importance over time. It essentialy a good RDBMS product with a terrible mail interface ( unlike exchange which is a great mail interface with a poor RDMBS behind it - though it has improoved )

I'm at a loss as to why people are still buying new installs on it!

Just to be clear, it's not a new install, it's been here since I joined the company and I would imagine for many years before that too, and I think they are planning on upgrading (to a new version of notes ) as part of the move to Windows 7. It's a very large company, but from my experience there is very little beyond mail that's linked into Lotus notes (Domino applications etc.), and I only ever use the mail client part. Although there are many thousands of other people in the company that may be using things I don't know about.

[shaithis]

As a mail client I agree - but for all those little applications that you only discover are business critical when you attempt to decommission the server its clinging on to some enterprises suprisingly well .

The funny thing is, most of those small legacy apps could probably be re-written by a chimp with a copy of visual studio and yet it causing a very questionable enterprise decision!

[Zak33]

bearing in mind our own (self emposed) swear filter and Admin requirements to stay polite.....

I shall say only this.

Lotus Notes sucks dead donkey dick

a lot.

[OilSheikh]

I work for a corporation and we use Lotus Notes. Why - I guess licenses are cheaper.

Advantages of Lotus Notes is with the database driven apps that Moby mentioned. You also don't have any .pst files or everyday .pst file corruption issues.

[DrATty]

15,000 messages in your Outlook inbox.Perhaps Lotus is trying to tell you something.