I hate notes

Notes Hate Searches

In one day, the following searches found this site.  There truly is some real hate out there for Lotus Notes.  Rise up and be heard!!!!

"i hate lotus notes"
"lotus notes is crap"
"people hate lotus notes"
"hate notes"
"lotus notes developer hate"
"lotus hate club"
"lotus notes bloatware"

Ben Poole and vested interests

There is nothing I can't stand more than people with tunnel vision.  In the case of notes we have 2 camps; the developers that love the thing, why? because they were trained on it, and have a vested interest, their income!  and the second camp, the users, the abused and ignored.

Too often we have applications developed in a box, without actual day in and day out user input. 

Yes, I know that the website that mentions Notes as the recipient of the bad UI award is out of date, and the company does not exist anymore.

But let me say something about that, the UI was better back then, since then it has gotten more bloated and abstract. 

Jesus Ben, the damn program generated the best selling mug at itmugs.com, with the simple phrase "Notes Sucks".  How blind can you be?  How can you and several others blindly go on your way, saying that Notes is best thing since sliced bread?

It is exactly this self centered, self interested blindness that has taken Notes down the drain.  Wake up, and move to fix the UI!!!

It is the UI Stupid!

Below is an exerpt from my exchange with Ben, please note that the 5 problems I describe are documented:

1. Whoa! This thread has been going on forever. That should tell you something. Yes, Notes does alot of things, but the primary day to day needs are email and calendaring. This is the portion of the program that people live in. Here are a couple of glowing problems:
   
   1) highlight a group of messages, drag and drop to folder or archive (impossible)
   2) Calendar entries along with attachments go against quotas
   3) removal of repeating meetings causes corruptions
   4) folder compression does not take place immediately
   5) quota hits do not allow you to send mail from web interface, and you won't be released from the quota until a compression is run.
   
   and on and on and on. 
   
   

This program has serious usability lapses that take away from someone's ability to do their job. A simple pop3 email server, and a basic calendar application would serve better. As far as a location to store and track projects, I believe a blog would serve as a better place for that, or in the past this was accomplished through newsgroup servers.

I hope the rumor is true, that our company is switching to Exchange. The funny thing is that I believe Exchange to be bloatware, but it does not even come close to Notes.

on 17 Feb 2005 by Joe (#)

Joe this thread started in October 2004 & livened up when I posted about it again here:

http://www.benpoole.com/weblog/200502012245

It’s not been going “forever” (nor has Uncle Dirtae’s thread).

Re your points above, you should know that at least three of them are just plain wrong / ill-informed, and that your site links to some extremely old material (the iarchitects site has been totally discredited: it’s a joke).

If you and Gary want your sites to do really well, then (a) consider injecting some humour in your posts, and (b) ensure every statement you make is factually correct. Notes has a lot of problems — God knows I’ve worked with the damn thing long enough — but one of the biggest is meandering humourless rants from its opponents

on 18 Feb 2005 by Ben Poole (#)

Ok, Ben. Understand one thing, I find the problems with Lotus Notes Humorless. They are counterproductive, and cause numerous productivity problems within our company.

Out of the 5 problems that I listed above, tell me about one that isn't correct. The problem with Notes is that the GUI is deficient and probably camoflages any true good things with the program.

As to the website, I really don't care if it does well. It serves its purpose, which is a catalog of other sites that people have created with similar frustrations. Everything on that site is factual, especially if it is related to problems I have personally had using the interface.

Make no mistake, I am not a novice to the world of groupware. In fact I have been a consultant to many major companies, isps and government institutions.

I honestly believe that Notes has a problem, and the Notes team must respect the input from its user community.

on 04 Apr 2005 by ThePef (#

Universal Hate for Lotus Notes

This blog gets hits from all over the world.  I have gotten hits from most of Europe, Israel, and Asia.  That is a demonstration of the problems with Lotus Notes. 

By the way, all of my previous calendar events magically disappeared, except for recurring ones.  In a previous post, I mentioned that the fact that your calendar goes against your quota is a ridiculous concept. 

It's the UI Stupid!!!

I think the biggest problem with Lotus Notes is the UI.  I can't imagine the amount of support that is necessary to run this application in the enterprise. 

Why?  Because a majority of calls a helpdesk recieves is UI related, such as how do I do this?  I accidently did this, etc etc. 

The Lotus Notes UI needs simplification, and clean up.  Nothing is intuitive.  I get frustrated reading posts from people that gloss over Notes' problems by saying that people aren't properly trained, they aren't using the capabilities, yada yada yada.

When these same people should be asking themselves, why aren't they using the extensive colaboration features, why are thier I hate notes sites on the internet, why is my helpdesk inundated with calls?

It's the UI stupid!!!

I honestly believe Mark Cuban when he states that Lotus Notes is "an amazing application"  , but most of us will never know, BECAUSE WE CAN"T GET PAST THE UI!!!

Mark Cuban

I found an interesting post by Mark Cuban.  He is extremely religious when it comes to Notes.  I agree with alot of what he has to say, but the point is "the backend can be the best thing in the world", but if front end (UI) sucks, then the whole application is useless. 

This is the case with Notes.  I cannot believe the amount of menuware present in this application, the drill downs available, and the totally unnecessary options for an end user. 

Perhaps, Lotus should be focused on a Notes Lite application.  One that displays email, with a local folder, drag and drop capability, a calendar interface, with logical meeting announcement handling, and the traditional interface into collaboration areas. 

Simplicity is a good thing, and is the root of good UI design.  Lotus take "Note"!!!

Oh My God!!!!

I would not have believed it.  Check out the Notes Sucks mug!!!! And it is their best seller.

You can buy it at http://www.itmugs.com

Focus Problems

Explain this one to me.  You launch Notes, then you Launch you Contact List.  The contact list will always stay on top of the primary Notes window, not allowing focus to go back to the primary window.  Then on top of this problem, if you minimize the primary window, the only way to get it back is to select the Notes app from your toolbar at the bottom and select restore. 

Who is the genius that developed this UI? 

And More, it never ends

Garret at this link wrote :

There is a special place in hell for the people who designed it's interface.

It's like they go out of their way to be inconsistent, both with 
standard Windows UI guidlines and amazingly enough even within their own 
application.

Have you ever seen such hate!!!  And it is justified.

More Notes Haters

This group has been going for several years: http://www.uncledirtae.com/blog/archives/2003/04/25/lotus_notes_sucks.php

And a song about how much they hate the program:
http://www.e-promag.com/epnewsletters/index.cfm?fuseaction=ShowNewsletterItem&ID=4551

The problem with Notes is that it is enforced by people on high, and not actually purchased by the users.

I hate notes links

Here we go, a quick list of sites devoted to hating Notes.  IBM listen up, this application is crap!

http://blogs.codehaus.org/people/rinkrank/archives/000860_i_hate_lotus_notes.html
http://www.computergripes.com/LotusNotes.html
http://kudra.hates-software.com/2004/04/18/f1e7d156.html
http://www.michaelbraly.com/archives/000168.html
http://www.sgtstryker.com/index.php/archives/i-hate-lotus-notes/

I hate Lotus Notes Club - http://thedailywtf.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=28180

Interface Hall of Shame - http://digilander.libero.it/chiediloapippo/Engineering/iarchitect/lotus.htm

I can't believe my company uses this piece of crap.  I have never seen anything like it.  I led teams on some of the largest mail installations in the world (POP3), and I have seen some pretty bad stuff out there.  I used to think Exchange was the Devil's Doo Doo, but I would kill to be on Exchange, after spending 6 mnths in Notes Hell.

What the hell is this?

Here is a great example of bad interface design, or exposing too much through the interface:

Bloatware

Notes is a prime example of bloatware. 

see definition: bloatware   

As the definition suggests, bloatware is the disease and Creeping Featuritis is the symptom.  Maybe is just a symbol of ancient applications that have not gone through any major architecture revisions, but have tacked onto what they have developed. 

But, I consider it real problem when you can't highlight a group of messages and simply drag them to a new folder, trash, or local storage...

Rant and Rave

I needed a location to express my frustrations with Lotus Notes.  So here it is.  I found it amazing that I found a registered name ihatenotes.com on the web.  The other amazing thing is that the site had over 3 million page views.  This program is truly the bottom of the barrel when it comes to bloatware.  Look for more postings as I experience Notes as a first hand user.