IBM Lotus Symphony BETA - Free

Posted by Graham Rhind
Oct 16, 2007 at 01:55 PM

For me having IBM behind it is a disadvantage rather than an advantage. IBM took Lotus over when its software was competitive and let it all die. This looks like an attempt to resurrect the (slightly updated) Lotus Office suite as a free version. I don’t think Microsoft need be worried.

I have never found any free office suite which can compete to any depth with MS Office. They will do 90% of what 90% of people require, but I have large and complicated documents and free or low-priced alternatives to MS Office just can’t manage them. OpenOffice cannot open large documents that even older versions of Word has no problems with, and Ability had to admit to me that their suite wasn’t as compatible with MS Office as they claimed after I sent them bug after diffference after bug after failure.

I won’t even be trying this one, I’m afraid ...

Graham

Tom S. wrote:
>I did download this some time ago. I find the potential intriguing because it has IBM
>behind it (read support for companies who are afraid to use an open source document
>format without it). But it will never gain any traction with me unless they package it
>and integrate it with Lotus Notes. Scripting would be a major plus as well as a
>database.
> >It will be interesting to keep an eye on it and see where it goes.
> >Tom S.