Real World Computing

I don't want to come over sounding "all negative", after all my last few posts were (justifiable) rants about installation issues but there IS something wrong with IBM's definition of FREE. It's not the product. Both Lotus Notes and Symphony are great full-featured products. The problem is the fact that IBM is obviously very uncomfortable with giving things away for nothing. I'm reminded of the sort of routine you see all the time on sitcoms, where one person gives another a gift but refuses to let go. There's that awkward silence and then, after what seems an eternity, the gift-giver finally let's go. Compare this to the Google approach of showering you with gifts when you walk in the door. I'm not suggesting that IBM should be like Google. Much as I admire Google, I can't help but think that their business model is ultimately flawed. Eventually, the rain of free goodies will have to stop if they want to turn a profit. So, where and how co...

I finally got to the bottom of the problems with the 8.5.1 installation and I believe that they're related to my use of the Google Chrome Web Browser. The Hard Way At work, after five unsuccessful uninstalls and reinstalls of Notes 8.5.1 (with some - always successful - reinstalls of 8.5 in between), I finally did two things. Switched my primary web browser back to Internet Explorer (don't worry, I didn't actually use it for the duration). Decided not to reinstall the single-signon service. It worked!! I later switched back to Chrome and then reinstalled (did a repair) to add Single Signon. It still worked. I was in business. The Easy Way Once I was on 8.5.1 at work, I decided it was time to update my home computer. I don't have single signon there, but I do have Chrome as my default browser. I wasn't expecting the same installation issues to occur but they did. It's obviously Chrome. This time, I decided to try a different approach. Following an anonymous...

Knowing (hoping) that I will receive a call from IBM today to follow up on my Lotus Notes client installation issues, I figured that I had better go back to 8.5.1. Of course, this means that I have to survive the entire day without designer. This time, I decided to make a note of my steps. They are as follows; Part 1: Knocking the Old One Off Start, control panel Go to add remove programs and remove Lotus Notes Close everything down... literally everything, notepad, chrome the whole lot. The removal took 9 minutes and this was with my antivirus and firewall shutdown. I then went searching through the file system to locate any old directories which may have contained Lotus software. I found one on my profile under application data and I found another under program files. I deleted both of these. I also killed my old installation files. After this, I started the registry editor and did a search for "Lotus". I killed the majority of entries except for those which were obviously...

I've just had a terrible user experience this morning with four failed attempts to install IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.1. I'm usually not one to give up but I have lots of work to do, so I'm going back to my old faithful 8.5. I'm not the only one either it seems. I've talked to a few others and I've had a good look around the internet. There seems to be a very high percentage of people with 8.5.1 installation problems. The problems themselves are varied. In my case, I got the core product working (after an extremely long installation - that bit, apparently, is common to everyone) but although I got the Administrator client running, the designer (and really my only reason for interest in the upgrade), simply refused to start. Other people seem to have different problems and indeed there's a whole list of them in the comments on vowe.net. ( http://vowe.net/archives/010922.html ). I tried uninstalling, deleting folders, running NotesKill and a whole host of other ...