From: Pete Loshin <ploshin@tiac.net>
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 95 08:54:38 PDT
To: "'cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: RE: "Notes" to be Eclipsed by "Netscape"
Message-ID: <01BA8CD0.30988CA0@ploshin.tiac.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Timothy C. May[SMTP:tcmay@got.net] wrote:

>At 6:52 PM 9/25/95, Jon Lasser wrote:
>
>>Perhaps the Notes pricing scheme is sooo outrageous (by the standards of
>>a student like myself, and probably most others, if it's still anything
>>like it was at the 1.0 release) that mostpeople have had zero opportunity
>>to examine the program, let alone really have time to play with it?
>
>I've never even _seen_ a copy of Notes running on any machine, nor do I
>know directly of _any_ of my colleagues who has. (Not saying nobody has, of
>course, just that I can't find anyone I know well who has.)

I've used Notes myself (and have written about how it and Notes add-in apps are used).  Yes, it was overpriced, but they came out with a less-featured, less-expensive version (which I haven't seen).  Based on my experiences, it appears to be a choice for rigid/business management/TQM types in big corporations, among others.

>I've been following the news on Notes for at least several years, even to
>the point of buying some Lotus stock several years ago on the strength of
>what I had read about Notes. (Alas, I sold it soon thereafter, before a
>run-up in price.)
>
>My point? Notes is nearly invisible in the non-corporate community I now
>hang out in.

No question about that.  You need a dedicated server, server software and, at least a year ago, it all cost something like $500+ per seat to setup.  Plus, it doesn't do you any good unless you are working in a workgroup.

>Who knows what weaknesses or bugs it has in it. Folks on our list probably
>don't have much familiarity with it.

I only just subscribed to this list, and by all rights should probably spend more time lurking; that said, Notes includes encryption and digital signature.

>My hunch is that, as the "Wall Street Journal" reported yesterday, that IBM
>overpaid for Lotus, that the notion of Notes becoming the universal
>collaboration/communication option is flawed.

There has been growing sentiment among certain sectors that workgroup computing is the wave of the future.  Unfortunately, given IBM's track record, their purchase of Lotus seems to doom it to a fate similar to OS/2: an excellent product with a track record, with a small but fervent following, which will soon be eclipsed by some less-featured, newer product that makes someone a pot of money (like CollabraShare).

Notes end users have always seemed to feel it had too much power and was not easy to figure out how to use; Notes programmers love it, and there are lots of addins.  With Notes going to IBM, Netscape seems to have made another very clever move--while it still doesn't justify the overall stock price, it does justify the rise associated with that move.

>(I've been saying for a while that the Web serves that purpose better, and
>that Web browsers will likely edge out Notes. Apparently I was hardly
>prescient, as Netscape recently bought Collabra, which is pushing that
>point exactly.)

Notes uses replication to distribute data across networks; there are better ways to have people compute remotely in my opinion too (not sure WWW is THE answer, but it certainly is one of them).

>--Tim May

-Pete Loshin
 peter@world.std.com