Lotus Blows

Yeah, back in the day when I worked for ConUSA we used Lotus Notes and I hated it. It is one ugly piece of software, although I'm tols the back-end is fantastic. Either Lotus needs to shape up, or people should switch to Exchange Server. Of course what I'd really like to see is a nice enterprise server that runs on Linux, but can use outlook for the client…

Second that. We use it to track bugs in our software. POS!

Your kidding right? Lotus Notes' GUI is far and away superior to Outlook's. Outlook for the PC isn't really that good of a client, it is only because the averange computer user is familar with Office that Outlook make sense.
Now I messed around with the Office X (Mac OS X) client, Entourage I believe – that has one slick GUI on top of it – very easy to use, but I don't think it works with Exchange.
Anyway, Outlook/Exchange aren't particularly better solutions that Notes is… both platforms are sorely lacking in the corporate groupware space. As the above poster stated – it's too bad a solid unix solution has come forward (GUI one that is. Mutt is fine and all, but the learning curve is too high for your average executive.)

Someone out there must have the wherewithal to write a new interface for it. If you despise it so much but prefer the “back end”, then why not write a new interface (or get a C++-savvy friend to) and enjoy the best of both worlds?

SOB,
Most companies won't let you run a client of your choice, they want a companywide standard. This makes sense from a tech support perspective, they also probably don't want you to be running code you or your friend whipped up because of the security risks. That's all moot though, to the fact that it would probably be nearly impossible to write a client for a propritary protocol such as Notes or Exchange that has little or no documentation. I disagree with Jim, I think Outlook is far superior to Notes, Entourage is far and above the absolute best, but it's not availible for PC, and I hate Apple hardware (love the OS though, I'll be the first in line when it's ported to x86). Anyway I still see a need for a good groupware *nix backend and can use Outlook/Entourage as a client, seriously someone could make a lot of money if they wrote one, although MS might not like it too much…

Exchange is horrible at filtering out spam/virus and the like. Notes excels in this area. Outlook running as *root* on your system doesn't help either. it seems like 9 of 10 email virus have been aimed at Outlook in the last year. This alone would steer me clear of it – why would I want to introduce a security flaw into my company? The time/resources to fix these issue isn't worth the ability to just stop it up-front. Notes gives you far more power to handle these issues on the front-end. Better yet, every script-kiddy in the world isn't out to get you.
Notes bumbles and falls over itself in the intergration with the rest of the internet area by using LotusScript (excuse me, Visual Basic). Visual Basic is a shit language, I hate it hate it hate it.
But for groupware purposes – group colloboration between business units within a company (not just email) – Notes shines far and above Exchange in this area.

With a good firewall, network security policy, Exchange patches and filetering software you can prevent the majority of worms and virii from becoming a problem on your system. Like it or not Notes it outdated and definately falling out of favor in business.

Outlook are for kids and grand parents who has just started to use e-mail. Thats okay, Mkay….