Lotus Notes is a gem of a product for usability howlers. Barely a day goes by without me cursing or swearing at it. Here’s an example of its dumbness… Without thinking, what time does the meeting start? I mean, what time do I, in the UK, need to dial in to the conference call?
I’m no fan of Lotus Notes. I prefer to use Outlook to read Lotus Notes; there is a connector that makes it possible to read your mail and use your calendar without ever having to open Notes. So it was happy days until I got a new laptop which only had Office 2007 installed. Office 2007 may be great, but the connector is not compatible and it meant having to go back to using Notes again. A couple of days of that and I was tearing my hair out. Even the promise of Lotus Notes 8 would entice me to stick with the experience.
So, how do you run Office 2007 and use Outlook as your mail client on top of Notes? It is possible… Office 2003 needs to be installed first with the notes connector working. Then install Office 2007, selecting to keep the old version of Office, perform a “custom install” and in the installation options remove all outlook components. You must not install Outlook 2007.
Result? Happy days again – Office 2007 goodness for all but Outlook! And I can live with email and calender in Outlook 2003 using Outlook’s text editor to write mail if it means that Notes can once again be an unused Shortcut on my desktop.
February 17, 2006, 5:13 pm
The Guardian ran a good article about Lotus notes.
“Imagine a program used by 120 million people, of whom about 119m hate it. Sound unlikely? Yet that’s the perception one garners in trying to discover whether Lotus Notes, IBM’s “groupware” application, is – as readers of Technology blog suggested – the “world’s worst application”.” Good news! They are redesigning it and asking for feedback. So I dutifully went to the IBM feedback form and filled it out. “question 3: blah blah blah. If not skip to question 5. So I skipped to question 5. And when I submitted the form it wouldn’t let me progress until I completed quesiton 4. Doh! There were other blunders in the form. If they can’t get a simple form right…..