I’ve been with IBM for 6 years now, and Lotus Notes is the email client I’m used to, although I do work with Outlook at home from time to time. How do you know if someone is a Notes user? if he uses the phrase ‘new memo’ instead of ‘compose’ or ’email’…
I wrote 2 months ago about my recent upgrade to Notes 8 client, but the early beta was too heavy for my laptop, and slowed down performance, so I rolled-back to 7.
Now I’m back. The new Notes 8 Beta 3 (see demo) is available for some time now internally at IBM, for early adopters, but now it’s also available for customers.
The beta 3 Notes (and Domino server) are much more faster than before. In fact, there’s hardly any different from my previous 7 version.
New interface is much better now, with clear icons, in a web 2.0 style (rounded style with cute animation), there’s an improved calendar and address book, built-in Sametime (IBM internal messaging application) and collaboration tools and also a support for Office documents – you can create and edit ppt/doc/xls files directly in Notes, and even run your presentation (slideshow mode) directly from the client. There’s also an interface to Lotus Activities, a new web-based workspace for virtual teams, still under beta testing, and internal only.
Needless to say that Notes 8 was built and designed on top the recent innovations in collaboration and communications, and is an excellent platform for organizations who has information sharing and managing in mind. You can start today – download the beta code now.
You can also read and view a visual tour of Lotus Notes 8,recently conducted by Computerworld.
Pictures courtesy of Ed Brill, available in Flickr – check out ibm.com/lotus/getn8now
