… but somehow my enthusiasm for everything around Notes and Connections is dwindling.
A month ago, I was all eager to write about Notes 9, today I think everything has been said, without my help. I use Notes 9 since August and it was a bumpy road. I believe it runs better on Windows, but I would like that it runs as good on my 2009 Mac with OSX 10.7.5 (complete standard installation, nothing fancy). Order by Date is the one feature I like, that is unusable for me. The other are those little pop ups with information about the contact, where you can choose the collaboration history and other things. Only by pure chance once in a while it pops up. No way to do it on purpose.
I tried to put Domino 9 on Oracle Linux – apparently kind-a RedHat – and failed miserably.
I looked for a few social gadgets and couldn’t find anything that makes sense to me.
By now, I just don’t see, why I should bother.
And there ist that other thing that makes me wonder. IBM released the IBM Connections Hypervisor edition. „Yeehaa,“ I thought,“ That’s the thing I need“. Put that on a KVM box (Collax V-Cube or even as a Collax Cluster) along with a Domino and I finally get what I want. Alas it is a bit expensive for just a couple of users and it isn’t in the run-your-business catalogue … yet hopefully (No head banging anymore, found the new pricing here. Got information about PVU Licensing from a distributor). Still, a per user licensing scheme would be terrific.
Last week I visited a customer I had not seen in years. The RAID of their Foundations box was doing strange things. One symptom was the complete lack of backups. Something that made me a tiny bit nervous. But once the disk was replaced, Foundations fixed everything itself and was up and running in minutes again and the backups magically showed up again.
But one thing made me think. They started with Notes and Domino all eager to use the features of the CRM we also installed (piece of cake in foundations, press button). Today after some key personnel left, all they use is the addresses. Users start to hate it, because they do not know how it works. The boss came to me and said, that he got comments from business friends, why they still use Notes. I tried to show them for a few minutes, what was possible, but I don’t have the impression, they were very interested.
As always, it isn’t Notes fault. Lack of training and external pressure of people who don’t know a thing about Notes are the main culprits … again.
Next week is Connect-o-sphere and this will be probably the first time, I am not going to be curious about what is coming. I don’t expect anything. Last year I hoped for something exciting and it did not happen. This year I hope for nothing … can only get better.
And on the lighter side:
Saturday was the day I should have stayed in bed. During the day I broke a cup, and two bowls and spilled a half finished pineapple sorbet (i.e. not frozen yet) over the kitchen floor … which looks like … no, you don’t want to know.
Last Friday I found out, that with those new cars, a movie car chase will never be the same. I drove into a parking spot a tiny bit too fast and that sissy of a car slammed on the brakes because there was a hedge. The break assistance on our new car actually works as designed. Imagine a car chase were the cars stubbornly refuse to run hedges or barn doors down. On the other hand, police cars will not be able to ram you off the street anymore. Boy, these will be very cultivated car chases. And you can’t turn it off (why should you in normal life).