"Notes" to be Eclipsed by "Netscape"

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 6:52 PM 9/25/95, Jon Lasser wrote:

>Perhaps the Notes pricing scheme is sooo outrageous (by the standards of
>a student like myself, and probably most others, if it's still anything
>like it was at the 1.0 release) that mostpeople have had zero opportunity
>to examine the program, let alone really have time to play with it?

I've never even _seen_ a copy of Notes running on any machine, nor do I
know directly of _any_ of my colleagues who has. (Not saying nobody has, of
course, just that I can't find anyone I know well who has.)

I've been following the news on Notes for at least several years, even to
the point of buying some Lotus stock several years ago on the strength of
what I had read about Notes. (Alas, I sold it soon thereafter, before a
run-up in price.)

My point? Notes is nearly invisible in the non-corporate community I now
hang out in.

Who knows what weaknesses or bugs it has in it. Folks on our list probably
don't have much familiarity with it.

My hunch is that, as the "Wall Street Journal" reported yesterday, that IBM
overpaid for Lotus, that the notion of Notes becoming the universal
collaboration/communication option is flawed.

(I've been saying for a while that the Web serves that purpose better, and
that Web browsers will likely edge out Notes. Apparently I was hardly
prescient, as Netscape recently bought Collabra, which is pushing that
point exactly.)

--Tim May

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