Lotus Notes 8 – a Quick overview

For one reason or another, I have a stated preference for using webmail over some sort of locally installed client. There are many reasons, but the main one is that I want to be able to read mail wherever, whenever.

Now, at work, this is not really an option. We do have webmail access, but it isn’t all that usable, the reason being that we are running Domino server, Lotus Notes, and Lotus Web Access. Now, I know that I have griped about Lotus Notes before, and I’ll still gladly gripe about the uselessness of the Web Access solution (especially as compared to Outlook Web Access). This is not a gripe.

A while back I asked one of our Domino Administrators to help me upgrade to version 8. For those of you who don’t know, up till then I was running version 6, which is an OK tool, but is found wanting (a whole crapload) when it comes to usability. Version 8 is still suffering from usability problems, a bit, but many of my main gripes are, if not fixed, at least less blatantly obvious, which is always nice.

A few things I’ve noticed:

• Higher ease of customization in the main email window
• Much better integration of SameTime (IM client)
• Shinier view
• Substituting the sidebar with a drop-down bar, which works much better
• Built in meter of the size of my mailfile
• Saves open tabs for next session

There are still a few things I’d like to see rectified. For example, why is this the location of my folders:

Overall, I have to say, Lotus Notes 8 is the best version of Lotus Notes I’ve seen so far. They’ve come far since version 5, which is the first version I encountered, but they’ve still got a ways to go. Even so, it works, and it works better.