IBM gives Microsoft angst with Lotus Notes Office

.itwire. ^ | Wednesday, 17 May 2006 | Stan Beer

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

IBM has just given Microsoft another 125 million reasons to worry about the future of its one of its two biggest money spinners, Microsoft Office. Big Blue has announced that the next version of its Groupware suite Lotus Notes will include the three main applications of the MS Office suite, a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation program.

What's more, IBM has stated that not only will the office productivity applications be compatible with Microsoft Office as well as the ISO standard Open Document Format (ODF), but the existing 125 million Lotus Notes users will be able to upgrade to the new version for free.

The new office productivity tools will also be tightly integrated with the existing groupware functions of the Lotus Notes system, making it an attractive proposition for enterprises to use them instead of the Microsoft versions.

Microsoft Office generates about one third of the software giant's revenue and about half of its profits. However, revenue growth from Office has virtually stalled, growing just 2% for the first nine months of the current fiscal year compared with the previous year. The market is virtually saturated in the developed world and free open source look alikes, such as Open Office.org, make Microsoft's relative expensive Office suite a tough sell in emerging markets, such as China, India and Eastern Europe.

According to Microsoft, its Office 2007 product will introduce a paradigm shift into the market. However, some critics say that the market is not interested in more learning curves when it comes to using a product they're already familiar and comfortable with. With the release ofIBM's new version of Lotus Notes, Microsoft may actually see its market shrink in the office productivity space.

[Echo Talon]

its a great OS! better then Mepis 6 IMHO. :) highly recomended

[rzeznikj at stout]

I'll have to give it a whirl once I get a new CD-RW...8^)

[Echo Talon]

whats so great about it is all you have to do is run synaptic and update it. That will take Awhile i hope you have broadband! but all you really need to install from synaptic after the update is libdvdcss2 , it will configure everything for you and will play dvd's and embedded radio plugins also work "right out of the box" no messing around! :)
Its easy to install to the hard drive but the installer takes awhile... probably because its configuring everthing and not just copying the files like mepis 6 does. The extra time taken on the install will save you countless hours of configuring everything! :P

[rzeznikj at stout]

I have no way of burning the ISO or installing it right now--it's that fried internal CD drive...:|

Though I'm long overdue for an upgrade on my current Suse system...

Seriously though, I've heard good things about synaptic...

Also, I've heard that Zenwalk is another good Slack-based distro...8^)

[Echo Talon]

eh.. i just tried the new zen walk yesterday... its OK, but not as good as PCLinuxOS IMHO...

[Echo Talon]

we need to find a way so you can install straight from the ISO.. you know what, I think there is an option for that during the install of PCLOS. I bet there is a way to install straight from the iso without burning to cd.

[rzeznikj at stout]

Well, that might work.

I have the hard drive partitioned

First one with Windows XP Home Edition SP2;

Second with Suse 10.0 Evaluation (2.6.16-default)

I could move all my important stuff off the Linux partition...

But with that and the ISO--I'm not sure how you'd pull that off as space is a premium on the NTFS partition...8^)

[Poser]

If my office staff has to learn a whole new office suite, it's going to be OpenOffice because it's free.

The chance of us using anything but Office for the foreseeable future is slim and none. The chance that we will buy a new version of MS Office is also slim and none.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I downloaded aLinux using Vector Linux, no problem getting it and burning the CD...but aLinux is questionable in my mind, not worth doing much effort on it.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

There seem to be some companies still running OS/2...saw that somewhere.

[rzeznikj at stout]

I've heard of it and saw screenshots, but never used it...

I thought that IBM got rid of it because it wasn't selling, that's all...