(BETA) New IBM Software: Lotus Symphony

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Starting today you can create, edit and publish documents without worrying about ongoing software licensing and royalty fees.

New IBM Lotus Symphony is word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software you can download and install at no charge – and start using right away to create new documents, edit documents created with Microsoft® Office programs, and publish documents in Adobe® Acrobat® (PDF) format. Lotus Symphony also supports open document format (ODF), so you can integrate documents with applications, business processes and data feeds.

IBM unveiled Symphony alongside an entire suite of next-generation collaboration products at the first-ever Lotus Collaboration Summit in New York City on September 18. Two of these new offerings include IBM Applications on Demand™ for IBM Lotus Notes®, making Notes 8 available as a service with enterprise-level application hosting; and IBM Lotus Notes Traveller, a mobile client enabling real-time replication of email, attachments, calendar entries, addresses, journal entries and to-dos to mobile devices.

View: IBM Lotus Symphony

Screenshot: IBM Lotus Symphony Documents

Screenshot: IBM Lotus Symphony Presentations

Download: IBM Lotus Symphony Beta

(1 reply) #1 neufuse on 21 Sep 2007 - 11:07

And this is supose to take on office? yuck... they have a lot of work to do to make it as refined as office...

#1.1 gadean on 23 Sep 2007 - 19:34

Lotus has always had that unrefined look to it. I hate it. Their software always looks like it's several years behind!

(2 replies) #2 needlegun on 21 Sep 2007 - 12:09

Why are IBM bothering?

MS Office is easily more slick and polished and years ahead on functionality & integration, even if it is expensive. Open Office and others are already out there and successful if you want free installed software and odf formats. Plus there are more & more free online suites from the like of Google, Zoho, etc.

If they're hoping for customer support tie-ins then I can't see a big rush for people wanting to pay a premium to call support teams in India for help.

#2.1 th3rEsa on 21 Sep 2007 - 12:34

MS Office has a strange UI.

#2.2 +Cy Bones on 21 Sep 2007 - 14:36

Quote - (th3rEsa said @ #2.1)

The new ribbon is much better than 30+ toolbars and once you have used it a few times you will get used to it.

#3 th3rEsa on 21 Sep 2007 - 12:33

What happened with the SmartSuite, actually? I haven't heard any news for years now.

#4 aGoGo on 21 Sep 2007 - 13:03

they killed SmartSuite, I remember their sales people promoting it. while they were using powerpoint for their training classes :p
I don't see this working for IBM, very bad idea

(1 reply) #5 +Cy Bones on 21 Sep 2007 - 14:39

I think the third screenshot link should be labelled as "IBM Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets" and point here:
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/s...uct_ss_sse.jspa

#5.1 dl0711 on 21 Sep 2007 - 16:41

Quote - (Cy Bones said @ #5)

sorry my bad.. the 3rd Screenshot lin should say:

Screenshot: IBM Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets

#6 eilegz on 21 Sep 2007 - 18:07

well based on openoffice, not bad, i would rather have a new version of smartsuite which i used many years ago....

lets hope this its compatible with smartsuite formats

#7 Havin_it on 22 Sep 2007 - 13:29

System reqs are heavy-duty:

What are the client system requirements?

    * Lotus Symphony supports both Microsoft Windows® and Linux® platforms.

      Note: Be sure your system meets these client system requirements:

      * Supported Windows platforms: Windows XP, Windows Vista
      * Supported Linux platforms: SLED 10, RHEL 5, Redhat5
      * 900MB disk space minimum
      * 1GB RAM memory minimum
      * US English locale

Why on earth should an office app need 1GB RAM? Oh well, looking at the positive side, it's nice to see another ODF-using office suite that supports Linux (and Mac in the future, they claim); and it'll certainly make OO.o look sleek and efficient

#8 JiveMasterT on 22 Sep 2007 - 18:00

I think those system requirements are pretty much worst case scenarios. The new Eclipse based stuff that IBM is churning out (Notes 8, Symphony, etc) are pretty decent. Once this stuff has been in the wild for a while and has been fine tuned it should be an ideal enterprise office setup.

#9 guruparan on 23 Sep 2007 - 18:42

Its Ugly

...

Its like Office 97 with different icons & a taskpane.. I see lot of "Dialog" boxes..! Way Far behind office 2007

#10 +Octol on 25 Sep 2007 - 08:53

Maybe I'll try it out. The question is: Will it be worth the purchase price?

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