Yellerdog

I''ve been using Lotus Notes on the Mac for some time now, starting wtih Release 7 and moving on to the 8.5 beta. With the release of 8.5 gold, I've been using a full version on my 2Gb Macbook for some time now.

All in all, things are good. Performance is acceptable, and just about all of the features I need are there. It looks great, and once it's open (which takes a bit), I tend to leave it open all day. Also, the preferences file is now a text file editable with TextEdit rather than a .plist file, which makes my life a lot easier. Plus the OS recognizes it as my default e-mail client. Replication is smooth and seamless as expected.

There are some hiccups that I would like to see addressed, however.

• Not all mail-enabled apps can take advantage of Notes as the default mail client.
• When I use some apps or the OS to "send a document" via E-mail, the file is often not attached. Sometimes a draft e-mail does not even appear.
• Performance is only adequate. My CPU is an Intel Core Duo, not a Duo 2, and I have just 2GB of RAM. Still, that's a pretty good machine, and Notes is my slowest app by far.
• The keyboard shortcuts, which I live by, are inconsistently applied. Alt-Enter opens up the properties box, but no combination of keys with F9 refreshes a view.

I am pretty far along in making the Mac my "home" platform, and Notes 8.5 was a critical step.

Now all I need is a Designer and Admin client in 8.5, and we'll be asll set.

 I have been using the Mac 8.5 beta client on my Macbook for about five weeks now, and I have some initial impressions. FYI, I am running on Leopard on a version 1.1 Macbook (Intel core duo) with 2Gb of memory.

• At this point, the Mac client is a lot more stable than I would expect from a first beta....
• ...assuming you have a clean install. I started with an upgrade and it was pretty crashy.
• Performance is OK. I am sure it will pick up in production.
• The Lotus team has a challenge in balancing the Mac UI guidelines and Lotus UI tradition. I am glad I don't have their challenge.
• I'd like to see the InfoBox be dockable and re-sizable.
• About the only thing I deperately miss from the Windows environment is menu keyboard shortcuts. Pressing Alt-F for the file menu is a lot more efficient than reaching for the mouse.
• IBM really needs to update the home page creation tools. They are basically unchanged since R5. One enhancement I would love to see would be an accordiion-like interface for controlling content display. They've done it in the sidebar, so it is obviously doable.
• When the migrate Administrator and Designer to OS X I will be able to delete my Windows partition.