IBM Lotus Notes 8.5 Is The Worst!!!

I just have to say it. I am using Lotus Notes 8.5 in the office, and, to tell you the truth, it's just got to be downright the worst e-mail and collaboration client I have ever been forced to use! It just totally sucks big time!! I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!!!

The first problem I have with IBM's Lotus Notes 8.5 client is the start up time. It's horribly slow! On average, I have to wait 15 full minutes for the resource hog to load. Sometimes, I need to wait another 5 minutes for the application to be in an actually usable state.

I tried optimizing the application by adjusting some Java related configurations. Still, it didn't work well enough to show any appreciable speed. As a last resort, I setup a Local mailbox. The performance is still ugly, seems unstable and, consequently, prone to getting a stupid consistency check process that could take 10 or up to 20 minutes to finish.

In the office, Sametime is integrated into Lotus Notes. Unfortunately, Sametime is just another resource hog to worry about. Even receiving an IM can be a pain. Its copy-paste feature can make the application seem to hang! The IM window may, for some reason, turn all white at times and I would have to save and close the chat in order to see the messages again from the Chat History feature. However, even Chat History is slow to re-load the messages for viewing. Oh, for crying out loud!

In order to avoid the application's lengthy startup time, I don't shutdown the Lotus Notes client anymore. Unfortunately, when you get back the next day, the application becomes much, much slower and would seem to hang at times. Are there memory leaks? I don't know. In the end, you'll have to shutdown Lotus Notes anyway and then opt to re-start your workstation just for good measure.

If the start up time is a problem, so is the application's shutdown time. It takes on average another 10 - 15 minutes to fully unload. Even if the Lotus Notes 8.5 client's window already closed, you can still find the Lotus Notes' process in the Windows Task Manager eating up resources. It would take some time before it would fully disappear. This is terrible since you don't want to interrupt whatever it's doing because you definitely don't want to get that pesky consistency check message again the next time you launch Lotus Notes.

I occasionally experience Lotus Notes 8.5 to crash. At least when it crashes, the application unloads fast and Lotus Notes' process in the Windows Task Manager does not stick around. Crashing is probably the fastest way to unload the application. However, when you try to launch it again, expect another consistency check to waste your time.

IBM should work harder on improving Lotus Notes most especially on performance, performance and performance! There are a lot of UI improvements, true. However, these improvements are no good at all if Lotus Notes 8.5 is very slow to respond. The better looking interface and all the new beautiful features put in are pulled down by the overall experience which is really bad. As it is now, IBM's Lotus Notes 8.5 just got to be the worst application a company could ever be stuck with! It makes you wonder how IBM tests their products...

Comments

Anonymous said…
I've been a Notes administrator/developer for a number of years (presently running 8.5.2), and don't see most of these problems. You didn't mention the hardware that you're using, but you definitely need something like a 3 Ghz CPU with at 2 GB+ RAM for the standard Notes 8.x client to run well. Startup time is usually not a major issue with most places because users typically leave Notes up and running on their desktops all day.
Anonymous said…
It brings us to question why software applications today seem to require much resources... I suppose that's something to blog about. Thanks! ;-)
Anonymous said…
I despise Lotus Notes with a passion. I did a google search about lotus hate, found this blog, read through articles, posted this note and the stupid notes still trying to refresh for me to respond to an email. It's horror...horror...
Anonymous said…
I agree with Anon on Nov 9, its not Notes that is the problem, its the administration of it. 15 minutes startup should not be tolerated. Notes can be fast, even on much less of a machine than he suggests. I use a 2.8Ghz with only 1Gig RAM for Notes development. (Development uses way way more resources than just using)
Anonymous said…
Well, I had my machine upgraded -- Intel Core i5, 2Gig RAM, blah, boast, blah. Unfortunately, I am still on WinXP so... what gives? But Notes seems to be behaving better now. I still hate the fact that it would require so much resources. Maybe the problem's in the OS? ;-)
John said…
Notes 8.5 frequently crashes on such mundane tasks as sending an e-mail and I can't use "Reply to All" because when I click it the button remains in the foreground of my screen, even after I completely shut down Notes. I'll be in Word, for example, with "Reply to All" sitting on top of my Word document and it doesn't go away until I reboot. Even closing notes doesn't fix it.
Anonymous said…
it just suxx.
Anonymous said…
It's bad beyond imagination. Has technical difficulties all the time. Work in IBM myself and everyone hates it.