The Lotus Notes hating just goes on… and on: it’s the Marmite of the IT world
I’ve written before (here and of course in the Gdn Tech section) about the amazing outpouring of hate that comes from users whenever you mention Lotus Notes. And here it is again..
We’ve been pretty much told that when the Guardian moves to King’s Place, as it will from September or so, that we’ll be moving to a more collaborative system.
We were definitely told that there won’t be limits on email (presently, officially, 50MB - beyond which you are told by the system that you cannot send email.)
This would be good, because Notes’s web interface has a brilliant trick for those of the Max Mosley persuasion: you write an email - composing it carefully, putting links and careful arguments in - and click Send.
It throws back a screen saying “You have exceeded your storage allowance. Your email was NOT sent. Please delete some messages from your inbox so you can send mail.”
Now, apart from the fact that it’s stupid that you can’t send mail when it’s your inbox that’s full, there’s another wrinkle: if you go off and empty out some emails (a pretty dire thought in these days, though often I’ll find that the offending item that’s pushed me over the limit is a 3MB attachment of some company’s new laptop bag that they could have perfectly easily hosted on their website), and then hit the “back” button on the webmail to recover that long involved message… it’s disappeared.
AAGH!!
So anyway, we’re all hoping very much that Notes will not be in evidence at King’s Place.
But there’s always that nagging feeling it might. But I still haven’t come across such a hated end-user product. Here’s the Twitter search such as “Benefits of leaving TW: no frickin Notes!”
And I’ve just come across a new (to me) site: I Hate Lotus Notes which, um, does pretty much what it says on the tin.
What’s always interesting though is that pro-Notes people who will leap into these pits of hating and try, vainly, to tell people that the fact they’re hating Notes is because (1) they haven’t had enough training (2) it’s not an email program, it’s an application development platform (3) they’re using an old version - the latest version, v. [What you’re using +2] solves all those problems (4) it’s better than Outlook, anyway (5) all of the above.
I think it’s still telling that Notes 6.5.5, which dates from December 2005, still doesn’t support the scroll wheel on the mouse on OSX - which has done so from its start, a mere four and a half years earlier.
But you have to admire the determination of the pro-Notes brigade. They’re like people defending the right to smoke in crowded spaces: everyone else is wrong, it’s just them who can see the right way to run the world.
(Later: I’ve added the “Marmite of the IT world” to the title, since I realised - when I wrote the comment below - that that’s what it is: you love it or hate it. No in-between. No “It’s OK, you know..”
And John Naughton adds his insight:
To me, the product seems so dated and kludgy: it’s the epitome of 1980s, DOS-inspired software. And yet the True Believers are deeply attached to it in the way that Jehovah’s Witnesses are to the Watchtower. They are unfailingly courteous and willing as they patiently explain that Notes can be made to do virtually anything you want; but when one explains that a teaspoon can also be used to dig one’s garden they look blank: they don’t get it.
There, that’s a nice circular bit of referral for Google to chew over..)
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- In today's Guardian: a Lotus Notes followup (16 February 2006; score: 71.08%)
- In The Guardian: Lotus Notes vs the end user (9 February 2006; score: 68.3%)
- Ooh, feel the anger: Fake Steve disses Lotus Notes (25 January 2008; score: 65.37%)
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July 21st, 2008 at 3:02 pm
You have a 50MB size limit on your inbox? Jeez, that’s unbelievable.
I work for a company that must be 50 times smaller than the Guardian and I have 1 GB. And I have colleagues with 2, 3 and 4 times as much.
Is that a Notes restriction, or are your IT department just mean with storage?
July 21st, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Do any of the pro-Notes people actually use it? Or do they deploy it for other people to use?
July 21st, 2008 at 3:56 pm
@macuser_e7: it’s a company restriction. Then again I also have a Gmail address which I haven’t managed to get close to filling yet.. and probably never will.
@paul: the Notes lovers/haters thing always breaks down exactly the same way: end-users hate it, with a passion; those who develop for it love it, with a similar passion. (And they do use it.) It’s the Marmite of the IT world.
July 21st, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Charles - Well said. I have been developing/administering Notes for 15 years and as you said people who administer Notes or develop Notes apps. absolutely love the platform. However, the UI is horrible and has been for many years. I will say that in 8.x they have made great strides to at least try to make it friendlier but it is still a bit of a mess in many places. At my current company about half of our users actually use Outlook as their client for mail/calendaring (hitting a Domino server) because they prefer the UI. I can certainly understand users’ complaints and always try to make apps that I work on as user friendly as possible but unfortunately there are just some things in the client itself that you can’t get around. As a developer I’ve also worked on many projects using Exchange/Outlook/Sharepoint/SQL Server/VB.Net/etc… and while the UI is much nicer than Notes it is a nightmare from a development/admin standpoint and, like you said, that’s why you find so many people who rabidly defend Notes regardless of its shortcomings. IBM/Lotus realizes that there are a lot of changes needed in the Notes end-user experience and are working on it. There were several years there where all of their focus was on Websphere and many thought that Notes would cease to exist in favor of some sort of Websphere/Java solution. IBM finally realized that most of their Notes customers were vehemently opposed to that and have really started pouring resources into making Notes a more user friendly product. I just hope it’s not too late.
July 21st, 2008 at 7:36 pm
If you think you’ve had problems with Notes, pray they don’t switch you to Groupwise. We’re on version 7 which uses a crappy java client that’s as slow as a dog for Mac OS X, only with the 6.5 version from two years ago realized that putting a Reply icon next to a message you’ve replied to is a good idea. Luckily its hated by the staff so much that someone figured out how to hack it into Gmail, so we can all use the Mac Mail client instead (assuming the IT staff don’t get too stressed over what we’ve done. I’m not sure they realize how many people hate Groupwise).
July 22nd, 2008 at 9:16 am
[…] Charles Arthur has a nice post on the effect that Lotus Notes has on otherwise normal people. I’ve just come across a new (to me) site: I Hate Lotus Notes which, um, does pretty much what it says on the tin. […]
July 22nd, 2008 at 10:16 am
Notes is a ginormous shining, cherry-red stove enamelled Snap-On toolbox with every single conceivable size of socket, Allen key under the sun, but with no drivers, handles or torque wrenches. The user has to employ their teeth instead.
I hate Notes as an end user, and rejoiced when I finished my last day of work in front of it last year. Yet I’m sure there’s a perfectly usable piece of Groupware hiding under there. then again, I’m not sure groupware is the answer - most people like using the tools that work best, as they’re developed - rather than being presented with a toolbox of old hammers and broken pliers.
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:37 am
50 MB, you might look into a new email program. Oh, in Lotus Notes, you can have a 50 Gb db. I bet you can’t find that in your email applications. And by the way, this bloging software has bugs…..the Lotus Notes blog template is superb! You should try ti.
July 22nd, 2008 at 3:43 pm
@Bill - I explained above that the 50MB is a work-set thing, not a Lotus Notes imposition. My complaint is with the stupid way that Notes then polices it, by destroying your draft in order to tell you to clear up your room. I’m not a teenager any more.
I think I could easily get up to 50GB given the opportunity. I never intentionally throw an email away.
And as for using the Notes blog template - thanks, but I really don’t think my hosting company would want to pay for the Domino licence, nor have to spend the money on training. Instead, it uses Apache (free, open source) running on Linux (free, open source) and I run Wordpress (free, open source) which uses PHP (free, open source). The functionality of Wordpress is enormous both for complete beginners and experts. So I think I’ll pass on that. I’ve seen blogs that use Notes.
July 22nd, 2008 at 3:59 pm
@Charles: given how incredibly cheap storage is these days there’s no excuse for a 50 MB limit on anybody’s mailbox. And I’m sure the Guardian wouldn’t want to encourage staff to throw email away if there’s even the slightest chance it might be needed to verify/stand up a story in court (for example).
I’m probably preaching to the choir here. Sorry.
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:34 pm
@macuser_e7: hell, you’re preaching to the preacher. Everyone including IT knows that 50MB might have made sense in 1995, but doesn’t now.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:52 pm
“beyond which you are told by the system that you cannot send email”
A Notes workaround that may or may not be possible with your configuration. Write the email as normal, ignoring the various messages that tell you you’re over your storage limit and forgetting for the moment that there’s no “send” option. Complete the email and then *close* it by clicking on the little cross in the relevant tab. You should then be offered several options, including “send and save”. Select it. Email sends and saves. (Also I’m amazed how quickly one stops noticing all the error messages and warnings this approach generates.)
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm
@11: Your company can also set up quotas to start warning you when you get close. Notes has a greater per-user capacity than Outlook.
I think Notes 8.0.1 is slow, but otherwise great. Of course I’m a developer (re @3) but I’d love it even as just a user for the following reasons:
1) Better UI. Yes, I said that. I think many will disagree (including me, pre version 8), but I like it.
2) Better integration possibilities for those that take advantage of it. See http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/CompApps?entry=sample_smart_assistant
3) Better ability to search my mail box.
4) I can put mail in a folder, even multiple folders, even sent mail, and _still_ see my sent mail in my sent mail, and all mail in my All view.
5) The sidebar.
There are also small things, like being able to schedule out of office for a time period in the future… specifying both date and time.
There are some things I like in Outlook that I miss in Notes. In Notes you can see people’s busy times, but Outlook out of the box lets you see multiple calendars at once, color coded. My understanding is that Notes will soon leapfrog this, but it’s not there yet.
July 23rd, 2008 at 4:39 pm
@Seamus - nice try. But this problem crops up in webmail. If I click the little cross, that’s the browser tab gone - and nothing ain’t going to bring that momma back. It’s a failure in the system that it doesn’t tell you *when you’re composing an email in webmail* that you won’t be able to send it (under its rules).
Sure, if I ever used the eeeeeevil Notes desktop client, that might be an option, except why would I suspect that I was over the limit? The messages don’t appear on their own - only after you’ve had the problem.
And I don’t use the Notes desktop client. Just as I don’t customarily poke sharp sticks in my eyes. There are limits.
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Curious. I can’t speak to Notes’ email quota system, having never used it, but in this case I’d have expected to see a warning message before the email is sent.
What did your IT Dept say when you logged the problem with them?
Cheers,
- Mike
July 24th, 2008 at 5:07 am
@Charles,
>> The functionality of Wordpress is enormous both for
>> complete beginners and experts
Hmmmm….
I have your blog listed in Google Reader and from there I can see the full text of your posts. But when I click on the link in Reader to take me to the post on your actual site, I get to a page displaying the following:
* the title of the post
* the date of every comment, plus the name of the poster
* a URL list of posts that “might be related (the database thinks..)”
And that’s about it. Conspicuously absent is the text of your original post and the text of all the comments. But it gets better.
The comment dates are all URL links. I thought, If I click on one of those links then it will expand to show me the comment, or take me to place where I can see the comments. No dice. What it actually does is scroll me down the page a bit, for no discernible reason.
Eventually, I discovered what I had to do was click on the title of article *again* - I’ve already done that once, in Google Reader, remember - to get to a version that I can actually read. Yet there was no clue to help me find that. The title doesn’t look like a URL: it isn’t blue or underlined, unlike the “these posts might be related” URLs. It just looks like ordinary text to me, until you mouse over it and *then* it turns blue. Besides which, why would I click on a link pointing to a page that I’m already on? (Or thought I was, anyway).
So, from these observations, can I deduce that Wordpress is actually crap?
Cheers,
- Mike
@Charles,
>> The functionality of Wordpress is enormous both for
>> complete beginners and experts
Hmmmm….
I have your blog listed in Google Reader and from there I can see the full text of your posts. But when I click on the link in Reader to take me to the post on your actual site, I get to a page displaying the following:
* the title of the post
* the date of every comment, plus the name of the poster
* a URL list of posts that “might be related (the database thinks..)”
And that’s about it. Conspicuously absent is the text of your original post and the text of all the comments. But it gets better.
The comment dates are all URL links. I thought, If I click on one of those links then it will expand to show me the comment, or take me to place where I can see the comments. No dice. What it actually does is scroll me down the page a bit, for no discernible reason.
Eventually, I discovered what I had to do was click on the title of article *again* - I’ve already done that once, in Google Reader, remember - to get to a version that I can actually read. Yet there was no clue to help me find that. The title doesn’t look like a URL: it isn’t blue or underlined, unlike the “these posts might be related” URLs. It just looks like ordinary text to me, until you mouse over it and *then* it turns blue. Besides which, why would I click on a link pointing to a page that I’m already on? (Or thought I was, anyway).
So, from these observations, can I deduce that Wordpress is actually crap?
Cheers,
- Mike
July 24th, 2008 at 5:10 am
… and it copies comments in twice! How rubbish is that!! (Actually, that might have been me).
July 24th, 2008 at 10:21 am
@Mike: I’ll seek a screenshot and the html of what you have. It could be a toxic mixture of Google Reader and my hand coding - the latter probably considerably more dangerous than you’d expect. Seems odd that a link wouldn’t take you to the page. For example a URL that has domainname/blog/?p=XXX#comments should have the full text.
Sounds like it’s found the right-hand navbar, which could be my CSS being Evil.
July 24th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
@13: “I think Notes 8.0.1 is slow, but otherwise great.”
Oh Lordy. All the things you describe it doing sound just like Apple’s Mail (search, sidebars - does it do smart mailboxes though?). Calendars is, well, calendars. And it’s that classic “it’s better in [version you have +2]” talk. Sorry.
July 24th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
@Charles,
“does it do smart mailboxes though?”
Just had to Google “smart mailboxes”, and they appear to be the equivalent of the “Search Folders” feature that Microsoft added to Outlook a few years back (with their usual accompanying ballyhoo).
Notes has only had this feature since the product was launched in 1989. They’re called “Views” in Notes. They’re not in the Webmail client though; at least, not in the version that you’re using. So, it’s poke-yourself-in-the-eye time if you want to see them; which you don’t, so you won’t.
Cheers,
- Mike
July 25th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
I’ve often been given to wonder why a complete break with the UI hasn’t been done earlier and I suspect the cause lies in the early success Lotus had in breaking into and creating the groupware market in the large corporate world. In essence it would seem there was too much an existing install base at each iteration that said it preferred if the UI didn’t change. Big corporate environments like stability even if it is limiting, just look at the banks still using Cobol. Now what all that seems to suggest to me that the people doing the buying of the software weren’t passing on the experience of the frequent day to day users to those selling the software and that didn’t get passed on to the designers.
For disclosure I worked for Lotus for a good number of years and by and large found it to be great software to use for what I was trying to do. It is something we need to acknowledge that the software we use in part shapes the way that we work and vice-versa and if you are already used to working in a particular way then using some tool that doesn’t match that is going to jar. I tend to believe that software should be designed to facilitate you working in whatever manner you find most effective and not be about straight jacking people into conforming with it.
July 25th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
@19, I can’t speak to apple’s mail program, but the sidebars in Notes allow for plug-ins like Google widgets and corp-built stuff.
What are smart mailboxes? To answer you seriously rather than how I think you intended it, there is functionality for predicting how you’d like to folder it and presenting it’s top three guesses so that you can folder it in one click. It used to be an add-on thing that shipped with Notes but you had to know about it and install it yourself. :-P Soon it will be included in the stock program, I’m told.
Re ‘it’s that classic “it’s better in [version you have +2]” talk. Sorry.’… If Lotus is a day late and a dollar short for you, that’s a shame on Lotus. I too wish they would have focused on user experience much earlier. But they’re focusing now. Maybe when your IT dept upgrades in a few years you’ll get to see what I’m talking about if the older versions haven’t put you in a rubber room by then. ;-)
August 20th, 2008 at 1:10 am
MAIL QUOTA
Your mail quota issues are due to several administrative issues.
First of all, 50 MB is ridiculous.
Second, the quota is set on the database, not the user. (hint: that’s where your IT staff should up the quota)
Third, when setting the quota on a database, a warning threshold field is right under it
Fourth, there is a setting in the server’s Configuration Settings document on how over-quota is handled.
Tell your IT guy to open the server’s Configuration Settings document, go to |Router/SMTP|Restrictions and Controls…|Delivery Controls| and change the setting for “Over quota enforcement” to “Hold mail and retry”
——————
Unfortunately, the Domino server isn’t something you should have an uninformed/incompetent/lazy person maintaining any more than you want someone blindly mashing around on your Exchange server. Stuff like this happens and end users end up blaming Notes rather than the guy in charge of making sure it’s configured correctly.
For the sake of argument and giving benefit of the doubt, let’s assume your Domino administrator just doesn’t know any better and pass this information on to him so you and your co-workers can stop suffering because of the misconfiguration(s)
August 24th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
@Kurt: yes, 50MB is ridiculous, but that is the default size. So go tell our IT people. Actually they can alter it person by person, and do. Yes, there is a warning, but one doesn’t get the warning while composing the email on webmail. Noted that it can be done. Might ask them to change it. That will be a fun conversation.
Though I think I’ll leave it to you to tell the Gdn Notes people that they’re uninformed/incompetent/lazy. I’ll hold your coat, obviously.
September 9th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Kurt had a reply which my spam filter ate. So here it is (apologies Kurt):
>>
@Charles:
Actually, the default quota is NONE - if there is any quota on the mail database when it’s created, it’s because the administrator creating the new user is applying a configuration policy that is setting the quota. Again, a configuration issue on your Domino server.
As far as the warning threshold, it can be set to notify you - via pop-up and/or an email (yeah, I know - but it’s a really small email) - well in advance of actually running out of space. Long ago when hard drive space was at more of a premium than it is today, I typically had users with 200 MB quotas being notified at 180 MB that they were approaching their quota. (nowadays I like to try to keep up with GMail quotas, just for grins)
Don’t get me wrong - there should be better handling of the situation so going over quota doesn’t force you to rewrite the whole email. In fact, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have the Drafts folder excluded from quota calculations.