Major product announcement or random musing about the future of Notes ... Ed Brill: No more "Basic" Notes client moving forward?

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Major product announcement or random musing about the future of Notes ... Ed Brill: No more "Basic" Notes client moving forward?

Mat Newman July 28 2010 11:21:47

Just read this over on Sean Cull's blog:

"As to Sean's base premise, I'm definitely inclined to abandon the basic configuration in the next major feature release. It would help with all sorts of things to move to a pure standard configuration." (Purporting to be Ed Brill)

Still trying to digest this, and analyse the consequences. My initial thought was "you're kidding ... right?"

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1Declan Lynch 07/28/2010 12:22:39
Major product announcement or random musing about the future of Notes ... Ed Brill: No more Basic Notes client moving forward?

Personally I hope they do get rid of the basic client. I've stopped writing classic notes interfaces for apps that I also have to write for the web because I'm doing it all in XPages now.

Basic is only handy for low powered machines and as time goes by the lower powered machines are being replaced anyway so it makes sense for the next notes client version to drop the basic client as there won't be as many low powered machines left by the time it arrives.

2David Price 07/28/2010 12:36:25
Major product announcement or random musing about the future of Notes ... Ed Brill: No more Basic Notes client moving forward?

@1 absolutely agree. Looking at upgrade cycles, hardware refresh, etc. the comments seem reasonable. Notes 8.x suffered because Vista didn't drive OS and PC upgrades (along with the recession) but even my most frugal customers have brought Windows 7 in to pilot.

3Henning Heinz 07/28/2010 16:51:25
Major product announcement or random musing about the future of Notes ... Ed Brill: No more Basic Notes client moving forward?

Maybe it is a better idea to ask those that still use the basic client and not those who don't. But the basic client makes less and less sense because those who deploy it won't get much value out of it (no new features).

4Sean Cull 07/28/2010 17:01:19
Major product announcement or random musing about the future of Notes ... Ed Brill: No more Basic Notes client moving forward?

what problems would it cause for you if Notes 9.x did not have a basic option ?

5Mat Newman

07/28/2010 17:54:04 It’s the architecture...

@1: Declan, I understand the 1 UI concept and associated benefits that XPages provides for development.

@2: David, Agreed. If there wasn't an imperative for business to upgrade their hardware (Windows XP is still prevalent from what I've seen) then there hasn't been a huge driver for IT to roll new machines simply to support a single application that requires more resources (see next comment...). As the US economy starts to recover I hope you see more activity like we have in other parts of the world.

@3: Henning, Spot-on! It's not just about the new features. I am aware of a number of organisations that don't even promote using the plug-ins that are there (eg: Feeds) let alone allowing users to install any.

@4: Sean, That's the thing I am having trouble extrapolating.

If you're a Notes 8.* Standard user now; try this: Shut Notes Down. Go to your Notes Program Folder (if you're on windows this is most likely c:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes). Find the file called "nlnotes.exe". Double-Click "nlnotes.exe" and see what happens.

You should now be looking at the "Notes Basic" client.

Maybe I have read too much into Ed's comment. My immediate reaction was - if there is no "Notes Basic" client, then what on earth is the architecture of the application going to be? Did Ed's comment simply indicate that a "light" install without eclipse would no longer be an option, or was it a hint at a major re-work of the Notes client sub-system? That's what caused my initial "you're gonna do what!" reaction...

My other concern is about the immediate potential for IBM/Notes growth. As Africa, India and China come on-line (is that where the next 100 million users are coming from?) they almost certainly wont have access to high-end devices and infrastructure required to support thousands of users running a resource intensive client; that's where a "light" version of Notes still has a place in the world.

Mat Newman IBM Champion

6Nick Wall 07/28/2010 18:47:17
Major product announcement or random musing about the future of Notes ... Ed Brill: No more Basic Notes client moving forward?

I'll have to get the specifics from the admin...but in current project, many users login to terminal services, the mixture of Win server OS and Citrix only supports 8.5.1 Notes Basic client.

7Erik Brooks 07/28/2010 22:37:22
Major product announcement or random musing about the future of Notes ... Ed Brill: No more Basic Notes client moving forward?

The "lite" version of the future is the browser.

Considering the next version of Notes is likely due in 2011, and with testing/deployment/etc. and many companies wouldn't be upgrading until 2012, plus potential hardware upgrades in between and more startup performance time improvements with 8.5.2 and beyond, I think dropping basic client support is a reasonable goal.

It should *all* be about XPages from here on out, with backwards compatibility, of course.

8Mat Newman

07/28/2010 23:04:49 Major product announcement or random musing about the future of Notes ... Ed Brill: No more "Basic" Notes client moving forward?

@6: Nick, Yes - Citrix users at the moment are restricted to the "Basic" client

@7: Erik, Light needs to also mean "Rich". 2 points; Until a browser can provide an equivalent experience that is the rich environment that is Lotus Notes, there is no comparison - even with the 1UI . There is also the reality that many parts of the world still do not have pervasive and reliable internet connections.

Feature Rich Client + Replication + Full Text Search + Unreliable Internet = Lotus Notes = Productive Employee!

What decision makers in the United States need to acknowledge is that not everyone around the world has access to cheap, reliable Internet connections. There are also many developing nations that only have access to technology due to contributions made through organisations such as http://www.computeraid.org and http://worldcomputerexchange.org . I don't know their figures, but I'm pretty confident that the machines those organisations handle would run a "Basic" Notes client without too much trouble. I would love to see IBM providing some LotusLive Notes licences for this type of exercise.

Wouldn't that dispel the "Lotus Free Countries" myth and promote "Smarter Planet" in one go?

Mat Newman IBM Champion

9Ed Brill 07/28/2010 23:50:35
Major product announcement or random musing about the future of Notes ... Ed Brill: No more Basic Notes client moving forward?

Regardless of what we decide to do for the next feature release, the 8.5.x version of the Notes basic configuration will be delivered and supported through at least 2014, so a long horizon with 8.5.x basic. What does the hardware platform of 2014-2015 look like? In that timeframe, will the developing nations be likely to be on 10+ year old hardware versus cheap netbooks or tablets?

10Randal Oulton 10/16/2010 9:57:10
Major product announcement or random musing about the future of Notes ... Ed Brill: No more Basic Notes client moving forward?

The basic client makes sense when the CEO is on a high-powered desktop, but the eclipse version is blowing up on her 5 times a day, at home and in the office, and it's taking 5 minutes to start up in both places, and while she's never complained about Notes in 10 years..... that's when the basic matters.

The basic doesn't matter to 10 odd developers who now don't even have to give you a cent for the designer client.

It does matter for this CEO whose assistant is whispering "outlook" in her ear.

If we lose track of what is going on in the trenches like 1-2-3 and WordPerfect did, that is where we will be. The basic version saved my butt, because the 8.5x range so far has been a *dog* for users. Sorry :{

Mat Newman: LIVE from Yellow Central

Major product announcement or random musing about the future of Notes ... Ed Brill: No more "Basic" Notes client moving forward?

Mat Newman July 28 2010 11:21:47

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