Lotus SmartSuite 9.8 review

Freelance Graphics is split into three distinct parts - the Slide Designer, the Page Sorter and the Outliner. This is similar to the way that OpenOffice uses several discrete screens for different tasks in its presentation tool, and is something that both suites need to improve upon in their next release.

When it came to opening PowerPoint files, compatibility proved to be patchy. Freelance Graphics was unable to recognise a skewed image on one slide, and dumped all of the fade transitions we'd placed on each foil, instead choosing to simply swap slides out for one another. Navigating through the presentation was difficult, too. In OpenOffice and PowerPoint, the down and right cursor keys, the spacebar and a click on the mouse advance the presentation, while up, left and a right-click step back by one screen. Not so with Freelance Graphics, which calls up a menu with a right-mouse click, and studiously ignores the cursor keys and spacebar.

Contact management is handled by Lotus Organiser, which looks and works like a paper-based Filofax. Approach bills itself as 'the high-powered database the whole team can use', and will happily work with SQL and Access data, so should meet most needs.

Overall though, SmartSuite is both frustrating and a little depressing, and on both accounts that's because you see glimpses of brilliance shining through the terrible interfaces that front its components. If Lotus won't commit to bringing these once-great applications up to date, it should put them out to pasture so we can remember them with the dignity they deserve.