Notes/Domino 6 and 7 Forum : RE: Fitness for a particular purpose

i>]There was a day (R3 & 4) when Lotus put a heavy focus on multi-platform
CLIENTS. It didn't pay. The UNIX flavors all died on the vine. And virtually
no one was doing development work on the Mac. But they *were* there before, so
you can't say the decision to discontinue was made blindly./i>]

Yes, but you have to admit that the combined desktop marketshare of all those
UNIX combined was much lower than the one of Linux now. And the presence of
Linux on the desktop keeps growing (next year will probably be very important
in this area as every major Linux distributor plans to release a Desktop-only
linux version).

i>]Why port the Notes client? 80% of functionality is available from the
browser. 95% will be available in the 6.1 timeframe. What are you missing?
Client replication?/i>]

Client replication.
Rich text fields (ok, you can have them on a browser, but they are a joke
compared to Notes' native Rich text field).
IDs.
Validations with @formulas (you can use them, but you know you won't because of
the way they work on the web).
The ability to attach files to a rich text file (the ability to attach more
then one file with just one field!!!)
In general, creating a web app that is b>]almost/b>] as good as a native
Notes app takes quite longer than a Notes version.

i>How many KDE laptops are out there?</i>]
At least three at my office, I don't know about others.

Nathan, understand our frustration in this area. On one hand, in the last year
we've had a lot of clients considering leaving Windows, but we've been unable
to take on this market because of the lack of a Notes Client for Linux. On
another, we've had a few clients for whom we've done custom apps. The
installation of these apps usually involved installing lots of computers with
just Notes installed and using Linux would have lowered costs a lot. And let's
not mention the fact that we would sell Lotus Domino on Linux to all our
clients if it wasn't for the fact that most Domino "add-ons" (Domino.Doc,
Quickplace, Sametime, are not available on Linux).
In the last years, it's been the end of the dot.com fever, it's been the end of
all the migrations and updates for the year 2000, it's been the end of the
migration to the Euro here in Europe. Unless we offer something new to our
clients, they are not interested on spending money on software. Linux is
something, and most of them are interested, if only for the blurb that
surrounds it, but we always step on the lack of a Notes client. We might get a
Notes client, we might not, but you can be sure we won't stop asking for it.

Salva

Notes/Domino 6 and 7 Forum

Document Options

Search this forum

Forum views and search

Member Tools

RSS Feeds