Lotus Notes 8.5 ships, free IBM Symphony suite coming
updated 11:30 pm EST, Tue January 6, 2009
Lotus Notes 8.5 announced
IBM (Booth No. 3418 N) is now shipping Lotus Notes 8.5 and also at Macworld Expo announced that a final version of its free Lotus Symphony document, spreadsheet and presentation software will be available later this month. Lotus Notes 8.5 offers an estimated 40-percent storage reduction by limiting attachments to a one-copy-only system and improves the user-friendly aspects of the software, arranging collaborative tools onto one screen, linking team rooms, instant messaging, to do lists, calendars and browsers all in one space.
Notes 8.5 is now integrated with Google, Yahoo and numerous smaller Internet calendars, and can display calendar listings from multiple sources in a single view. Using Safari, Lotus Notes license-holders can access notes from anywhere. It also offers support for Google widgets.
Lotus Notes 8.5 will ship later in January, with a similar licensing model. Mac requirements have not been announced.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: May 2005
Bloated client
Now, all previous Mac versions of Notes clients were even more bloated than the Windows one. If there's any chance at someone there actually making an effort to slime it down, it would be just spectacular.
What would be even more spectacular is if they were to finally build a true native iPod client (which would support those Notes database applications as well). Even if it only supported mail, calendaring and other workgroup features, it would still be enough to displace BlackBerry from all those Notes shops. Keep in mind, while Exchange is the king, Notes is just behind it, and it still commands a formidable market share.