I stumbled across this the other day - IBM Lotus Symphony - consisting of a word processor, a presentation program and a spreadsheet.
I just can’t really understand why this even exists. It’s free, but not open source, reading the FAQ, it’s not entirely compatible with MS office, and reading the documentation, it’s not exactly feature-rich. I’m aware of the rich and lengthy history of Lotus software - but it doesn’t look like this is a descendant of anything that existed in SmartSuite or anything - it’s a new product, but just a feeble one.
So why even bother? MS Office and OpenOffice (plus a bunch of others) have this covered already - this is like not only reinventing the wheel, but deciding to make it square, and from meringue.
Corporate customers, no doubt. A corporation can probably get a real deal on that software if they’re getting everything else from IBM as well, and they get hand-holding (tech support) thrown in as part of the package. A lot of what IBM sells has nothing to do with the average consumer.
It’s actually based on OpenOffice, according to other articles I’ve read. I speculate that this might be useful package for those who want to use OpenOffice and also Lotus Notes.
Interesting that they’re reviving the name of Lotus’s biggest flop.
The original Lotus Symphony was an unwieldy spreadsheet/word processor program that put the text in a Lotus spreadsheet for editing. I know only one person who ever used it, and it was a pain in the ass.
It’s sort of like Ford naming their next new car “The Edsel.” It’s just that the original Symphony flopped so badly that no one these days has heard of it.
But wouldn’t a Big Corporation, Inc. want software that is compatible with their clients?
Any document or letter you produce should be legible to the people who you are selling to, if you want them to give you money. And since the whole world uses Micro$oft Word, you pretty much have to play along, don’t you?
Some companies might like to keep money for useful things, not send it to the Whore of Redmond. Thus, OpenOffice or another solution. I use StarOffice at work exclusively, being lucky enough not to be on Windows, and I’ve had very few problems, especially with later versions.
Well, that’s the point though - there’s already an established alternative to Office - there doesn’t seem any need for a newcomer, especially such a limp one.