Printed from www.pcpro.co.uk
Posted on August 6th, 2008 by Simon Jones
Want to try IBM Lotus Symphony?
If you want to download and try Lotus Symphony, IBM’s free office productivity suite, be prepared to be treated as a criminal suspect. IBM won’t let you have the installation kit until they’ve checked you out. You have to hand over your name, country and email address and then you get the message:
“This product is subject to strict US export control laws. Prior to providing access, we must validate whether you are eligible to receive it under an available US export authorization. Your request is being reviewed. Upon completion of this review, you will be contacted if we are able to give access. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
It’s a word processor, not the designs for a nuclear bomb. No, they’re easier to obtain.
After waiting a day you then get an email entitled “IBM Lotus Symphony 1 failure”
“Your business with IBM Lotus Symphony 1 is very important to us. We are sorry that your previous transaction with us did not go through. We have fixed this error in your account. Please return to the IBM Lotus Symphony 1 web site to resubmit your transaction. Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience.”
What failure? What error? What account? At least they include a URL in the email to get you back to the download page, where you have to give you name, email address and country again.
What a palaver.
10 Responses to “ Want to try IBM Lotus Symphony? ”
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August 7th, 2008 at 10:26 am
It’s all a cunning ruse to make you even more keen to use it. Seriously, though, if IBM is serious about getting Symphony used then it needs to stop thinking like a corporate behemoth and follow the lead of Google and Zoho. Signing up to their services is easier than breaking into a bouncy castle.
August 7th, 2008 at 10:41 am
I’ve told you before, stop trying to download via the secret Dennis server farm in Azerbaijan! The whole of the IBM Download labyrinth is like this, even if you are a Passport Advantage customer. It’s like those school books with your address written as “the continuum, the universe, unified-atomic-force-model, galaxy number…”
August 8th, 2008 at 12:03 am
I wouldn’t waste your time– it is nothing but OpenOffice with an even worse UI.
August 8th, 2008 at 8:04 am
I agree about the UI.
The idea to build a pane of modeless controls for formatting was good but they haven’t done enough. There are far too many instances where the only way you can do what you want is to wade through a modal dialog box. Even simple things such as putting a border on cells in a spreadsheet requires a modal dialog yet drop shadow on cells is in the property pane.
Why does dragging the corner of an image change the aspect ratiio even when you’ve ticked the “Keep ratio” box in the properties pane? Why can’t you click and drag a handle to rotate an image? Symphony forces you to use a modal dialog to enter the number of degrees to rotate the image by.
The list of deficiencies, inconsistencies and annoyances gets longer the more I use it.
August 14th, 2008 at 8:27 am
Can’t comment on what IBM does to non-American nationals, I downloaded my copy from the US without even having to find out WTF IBM did with my developer registration info.
A more serious problem is that they don’t support Debian / Debian-derived (e.g. Ubuntu) Linux distros. Since that’s where the userbase is moving, this is fairly idiotic.
August 14th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
I think all the adverse comments are right, and also find it is a shame that you cannot specify default page size to A4. We hope 1.1 will solve this and make it easy for us to migrate to symphony OR open office from Lotus Wordpro!
We have been on our own for many years now (using wordpro, as we opted for Amipro about 18 years ago), but symphony includes filters to import .lwp & .mwp files. This is almost a clincher for us, but I will wait 6 months to see if 1.1 appears.
I had no problem downloading, except for a dll which is missing on w2k systems. We are tempted to go Ubuntu and open source overall, as I am less than impressed by the high handed and proscriptive stance taken by FAST and BSA. We run a clean operation , but get the impression that they start from the stance that all small company users are criminals. Rant over.
August 15th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Ami Pro, and its predecessor, Pro Write Plus, were, in their time, the best word processors on the market. Unfortunately their time was limited. They were overtaken by Microsoft Word and IBM can’t write PC software for toffee. They only bought Lotus to get Notes and just weren’t interested in anything else so development work on SmartSuite slowly stalled. With no updates to SmartSuite since 1999 you can say that it is now effectively dead and anyone still using it should seriously be looking to change.
There’s no prospect of SmartSuite ever being able to work with OOXML or OpenOffice 1.2 format files. This will be painful for anyone with years of investment in SmartSuite but delaying the inevitable will only cause more pain later.
August 18th, 2008 at 6:05 am
“US export authorization” If you read far enough into the small print on Microsoft products, you will find this language. As I recall, you have to click a box to self-certify that you won’t send your Office package to Iran, etc.
Not too long ago a big UK online travel agency was bought by a US company. They cancelled all bookings to Cuba because US companies and subsidiaries are banned from trading there.
Right now, NBA managers would love to recruit the 7′2″ star of the Iranian Olympic basketball team. The US gov says hands off.
August 18th, 2008 at 7:26 am
When you buy a DELL PC you have to say you’re not going to use it to run a nuclear power plant.
Restrictive trade laws are not, however, a good reason for companies like IBM to make honest people feel like suspects. Other companies find less intrusive ways to check they comply with the law when distributing their goods and services. IBM should take note.
August 19th, 2008 at 9:16 am
I am just a little guy. I have used awful, slow IBM desktops, used Lotus notes (pre IBM when it was a good product for its day), argued vehemently with suppliers who insisted that that weird OS they half produced was really good (they lost my custom fast) and tried to get a few things fixed at a reasonable price (impossible).
It is not really worth the trouble to comment on IBM PC stuff. Why can’t journalists just let the whole sorry story vanish from history. I though I had until this article appeared on my screen. The message to write is that if you are an IT manager just move on from IBM stuff and leave your competitors who still use it to go bust.
Thanks a bundle.