Product Reviews

When Lotus SmartSuite Millennium Edition (SSME) was launched back in autumn 1998 (reviewed issue 49, p172), its main competitors in the marketplace were Microsoft Office 97 and Corel WordPerfect Suite 8. It's a testament to the overall power and usability of Office 97 that SSME didn't even come close to toppling it in terms of general functionality, although Lotus had clearly leapfrogged Corel's offering.

SSME did have two important advantages over Office 97. The first of these was direct file access to intranet or Internet servers. By clicking on the Internet button within standard file open/save dialog boxes, users could load or dump documents from or to Internet servers. Microsoft Office 97, although it incorporated the ability to open or save in HTML format, couldn't access files remotely except by using standard network protocols. Again, WordPerfect Suite trailed even further behind both. SSME really was the first true intranet suite and the significance of this perhaps wasn't fully appreciated.

Voice recognition represented the other feature absent from Microsoft's business applications at the time of SSME's launch. Corel had bundled Dragon's NaturallySpeaking with WordPerfect Suite 8, but Lotus had more closely and effectively integrated IBM's ViaVoice technology with WordPro and 1-2-3.

Moving goalposts

With the launch of SSME 9.5 comes an opportunity to re-evaluate the suite in the context of its current competition, namely Microsoft Office 2000 (reviewed issue 57, p166) and WordPerfect Office 2000 (reviewed issue 59, p178). Both players have clearly taken a long, hard look at the original SSME and played 'catch up' in certain areas. Although I think it's unfair to presume that Microsoft only pulled its socks up in terms of Internet integration in Office 2000 after evaluating SSME, it's clear that several features of SSME are now present in Microsoft's current-generation suite. Office 2000 users can now open and save documents using HTTP or FTP, as well as conventional network protocols. In addition, the improved HTML support in SSME was matched, even comprehensively outdone, by Office 2000. The inclusion of the FastSite Web site creation application in SSME was matched by Microsoft's incorporation of FrontPage into Office 2000 Premium.

Interestingly, Microsoft has chosen to ignore voice recognition as a suite feature in Office 2000. Corel has continued, however, with a 'Voice Powered' edition of WordPerfect Office 2000, which includes Philips FreeSpeech 2000 and a microphone headset. This appears to work extremely well, although I'd stress that voice-recognition applications work well with some voices and not with others. I get better results from FreeSpeech than ViaVoice, but you might not. In the unlikely event that voice recognition is a major part of your corporate strategy, it certainly needs testing prior to rollout.

Before conducting a full re-evaluation of SSME in its new market context, it's useful to look at how Lotus' suite has developed since the original release a year or so ago.

All the nines

The original SSME wasn't originally attributed a version number, but adopted the moniker 9. Lotus quickly responded to problems reported by users and the 9.1 release was rolled out as a free upgrade to 9. It features over 142 individual bug fixes, and while this isn't an impressive tally in itself, Lotus' openness in admitting problems and fixing them is praiseworthy.

Version 9.1 introduced certain enhancements to functionality as well as bug fixes - although not many. Lotus also claims that both performance and usability were tweaked. FastSite was upgraded to work with PowerPoint, Word and Excel documents and the number of templates supplied was increased. There were certain file format compatibility issues addressed, such as 1-2-3 being able to read documents created in versions of Excel prior to Office 97.

Lotus has decided to charge for the 9.5 upgrade to SSME, so it would appear that the company feels this is far more than a set of bug fixes and simple enhancements. On the face of it, there's not a great deal to shout about. Admittedly, Organizer has received a complete overhaul and now appears in its brand new Version 5 incarnation (see p132). FastSite skips to its second release, too. But the core applications exhibit no fundamental changes to their functionality, and there are only a handful of enhancements.

FastSite 2.1 seems to have received a less fundamental overhaul than Organizer, although to be fair it received a pretty positive reception first time out. There are a few new templates (basic layouts, including navigation buttons) and increased compatibility with a wider range of applications. FastSite can be briefly described as a Web-site creation and management tool used for incorporating documents created in business productivity applications (such as SSME

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or Microsoft Office) into simple, template-based Web sites.

The original version included with SSME could only cope with native SmartSuite documents. In accordance with the general trend towards better integration in mixed-suite environments, Lotus introduced support for Office 97 applications into SSME 9.1, now followed by compatibility with Word and Excel 2000 and Quattro Pro. Whereas the previous version of FastSite offered just two final output options - HTML and jDoc (a composite of HTML and embedded Java applets for suitably-enabled browsers) - version 2.1 now offers three output options. These are: SmartSuite/Office HTML (a rich-page format that can only output SSME or Office documents, presuming the native apps are on your PC); Verity HTML (less rich, but able to output documents from applications not present on your PC); and the richest format of all, jDoc (the same mix of HTML and Java, but only operational with documents created in SSME).

Of the rest of the suite's enhancements, the most significant is an update to the ViaVoice runtime engine. This reaches version 5.2, which includes optimised code for Pentium III systems. There are some speed improvements (but then a Pentium III processor should be faster anyway), although ViaVoice still seems to dislike my dulcet tones. It also has a new feature called Talking QuickDemos, which simply walks you through common ViaVoice functions.

For corporate organisations reliant on a Lotus Notes/Domino information-management, workgroup and email system, SSME remains the application suite of choice. Pretty much everything is now Notes/Domino 5 compliant and certain applications now have additional Notes features. For example, Approach now has a fully integrated Notes Reporter. Most SSME applications also have the ability to open and save documents directly from or to a Domino database, streamlining the information-management system. A potential advantage for organisations in the process of rolling Notes installations out is that SSME 9.5 actually includes the full Notes 5 client software in the retail bundle, saving a few quid on licences in the process.

If you point your browser at www.lotus.com and navigate through the SmartSuite product section to the details about version 5, there's a section on Notes integration that should answer some of your professional queries.

Although in certain cases the enhancements really count as bug fixes, Lotus has worked hard to improve the quality of its file-format translation. Like Corel, Lotus realises that if it's to eat into Microsoft's market share, SSME needs to work seamlessly in a mixed-suite environment. Unlike WordPerfect Office 2000, which can't handle Microsoft Office 2000 file formats, SSME does. Not only that, but file formats are 'sticky' - open a Word 2000 file in WordPro and it will remain in that format when saved back out. The quality of the file-format filters is generally high, but you should bear in mind that compatibility isn't 100 per cent. WordPro still has problems with graphics in Word documents and Excel still outguns 1-2-3 on formulae, leading to translation warnings when opening and saving files.

Cutting the mustard

If you remember our original review of SSME, the conclusion was that the program didn't outgun Office 97 in the business productivity war, although it slotted in above WordPerfect Suite 8. Both Microsoft and Corel have introduced major upgrades to their suites, particularly the former, and Office 2000 now leaves SSME way behind. While Lotus took the early lead in Internet integration, Office 2000 now blows it away. The level of HTML compatibility offered by Microsoft is ahead of that in SSME and there are few Internet features, if any, where the Lotus product holds the lead. However, WordPerfect Office 2000 still lags behind both in this respect, so SSME is a strong number two.

In general functionality, SSME maintains the same status between Microsoft and Corel. The apps are still quirky in places, although it's nice to see minor changes like the disappearance of the loathsome help balloons and arrival of 'proper' tool tips, and little has been done to address criticisms of inconsistencies in the interface. However, the core strengths of the applications remain. Team working is well implemented, especially in WordPro, and many of the applications have an ease of use in the low- to middle-power range on a par with or better than Office 2000. For simple database work, Approach is still one of the best products on the market and Freelance is pretty much head to head with PowerPoint in the presentation stakes. The gap between 1-2-3 and Excel continues to widen. FastSite is what it claims to be - a quick way of popping a data-holder site together - but trails behind Microsoft's FrontPage.

When compared with WordPerfect Office 2000, SSME is the stronger product, but it should be, as it's more expensive. While Lotus seems to have a 'sensible' OEM policy for increasing its market share (bundling SSME with new PCs), the standalone retail price is high, certainly compared with WordPerfect Office 2000. As an upgrade, SSME 9.5 is more competitive. For users of competing suites or individual applications, £119 is reasonable. But it's a high price to charge people who paid full whack for SSME 9 this price just to upgrade to 9.5. For these users, SSME 9.5 represents merely an upgrade of Organizer 5 and a handful of minor improvements. As such, value for money could be better.