Trial offer: Use the IBM Workplace Managed Client for 180 days -- at no charge

March 3 2006

On the IBM website, you can register for a 180-day trial download of the IBM Workplace Managed Client.  Trial users can participate in a discussion forum on IBM developerWorks around the program.

I guess this is one way we'll get some feedback on the t-shirt. (Not available outside EU)

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  IBM Workplace  Add/View Comments [17]

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  1. 1  Bill Geimer  | 3/3/2006 5:04:04 PM

    Thanks. When do we get to trial the Notes client plug-in?

  1. 2  Bill Geimer  | 3/3/2006 5:08:10 PM

    I should add that IBM now requires me to put in a Suffix for my name in my profile, even though I do not have one. Silly, IBM. I finally found it would let me go with just a period in the field. What is up with that.

    Also, be warned that in addition to requiring a registered ID, they also require a lot of information about your company, not limited to Nbr. Employees, types of O/S and versions, productivity suites and versions, and e-mail type and versions. Seems like a lot for a 180 day beta trial.

  1. 3  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 3/3/2006 5:41:27 PM

    Bill, how many 93 years old grandmothers from Albania with a degree in Astrophysics and an e-mail address at the White House download their software?

  1. 4  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 3/3/2006 7:22:40 PM

    Just opened shop for the US: { Link }

  1. 5  Stan Rogers http://stanrogers.blogspot.com | 3/3/2006 11:41:40 PM

    I've got to go along with Bill on this one, Volker. As an independant who doesn't have a "company" as such, I find a lot of IBM's programs like this prohibit me from keeping up with things except by hearsay. Unless I lie on the form, that is.

  1. 6  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 3/4/2006 4:10:25 AM

    Stan, you don't lie. You download it for your 93 years old grandmother from Albania with a degree in Astrophysics and an e-mail address at the White House.

  1. 7  Teseo  | 3/4/2006 8:58:41 AM

    Must be something I don't understand.

    What does this Productivity Tools is?

    A new flavour of an Office functionality?

    It is my first experience with WorkPlace far away than "only info" and I am completely frustrated.

    I understand you now when tell that Lotus Notes will be survice to workplace.

    Lotus Notes has many enemys. IBM is one of them?

  1. 8  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 3/4/2006 10:59:09 AM

    @vowe -- I really would like to get valid data from customer registrations, kthx.

    @7 - The Workplace Managed Client includes integrated productivity editors derived from OpenOffice.Org.

    What I don't understand is your last comment. Notes is being integrated into the Workplace Managed Client -- can run that way in 7.0, will run that way on Linux in 7.0.x, and in the "Hannover" timeframe will be a seamless integration. All Notes applications will run as they've run for sixteen years. New, more powerful Notes apps will be built -- both for Domino and as composite applications. Why would this be bad for Notes?

  1. 9  Teseo  | 3/4/2006 11:34:27 AM

    @8 Hi Ed.

    I have been using and developing applications in Lotus Notes since 4.6. Really I think it is a very good platform for business applcations.

    Since that time I have gone and have hear things from IBM like if IBM don't understand Notes.

    The move to Workplace have been the biggest. I have read many information about it and have speak with "Noters" with the same conclussion: I don't understand this product and I don't understand the IBM strategy".

    Your comments about "Lotus Notes is alive" have been interpreted by me like IBM has been realized of the power of Notes.

    Due to that I went quickly to your link to download the "Productivity Tool". This morning (I write from Spain) I get up early to try it telling "today is the day when I will understand workplace".

    The try only show me a new flavour of MS-Office or Star-Office. I expected many more. I am very "desilusionado" about IBM strategy. Or perhaps I have not understand the strategy completely?

    When could we see that new products running and not in paper and presentations?

    Teseo.

  1. 10  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 3/4/2006 12:40:08 PM

    Ed, of course you would. The best way to do this is to let people decide which fields they want to fill in.

    The IBM approach seems to be to have a lot on "required" fields. If you are lucky, you meet the 93-old grandmother from Albania. You then know that the data is not very useful to you. If you are not so lucky, you get a lot of garbage that is not easily distinguishable from good data.

    I have found a way to deal with this problem. For all fields that are "required" and where I do not have any sensible information I always select the third choice. For fields that are not multiple choice I recycle whatever is in the clipboard.

    BTW: The online evaluations for Lotusphere suffer from the same problem. When they were on paper, you could answer what you wanted. Now the system assumes you are stupid. Guess what happens.

  1. 11  Martin Hipfinger http://www.konfabulieren.com | 3/5/2006 1:59:47 PM

    when playing around a bit i thought "that's all?" - but i really would like to see and test the notes client plug-in before i am really sure that this big java thing isn't only a big java thing ;-)

  1. 12  Randall Shimizu  | 3/5/2006 3:07:53 PM

    Ed:

    When are we going to see some scability rerports or numbers on

    Workplace managed client. ....???? IBM and Lotus employees seem to be ducking this question.......!!

  1. 13  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 3/5/2006 3:42:39 PM

    I'm not sure what you're asking for. Scalability in what sense?

  1. 14  Randall Shimizu  | 3/6/2006 1:25:26 AM

    I was referring to the number of concurrency or the number of simultaneous WPC clients. Awhile back there was some talk that Lotus was having problems with more than 25 WPC users log on and authenticate during startup. The latest info was that Lotus had up to 100 users up with WPC version 2.6. There was also some talk that the Workplace server would crash with more than 100 users.

    Since then IBM has been reluctant to release any formal studies or demonstrations. Would be great if IBM were willing to show this at the IBM customer centers.

    Later

    Randy

  1. 15  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 3/6/2006 7:07:21 AM

    I'm not sure why you can't get the information you need on that... if you e-mail me with the details of the customer situation you're working on, I'll get that to my colleague Kim Artlip who is the sales lead for the Workplace Managed Client. As for published benchmarks, I am not sure what plans exist, but we certainly have more than 100 users on the internal Workplace servers at IBM.

  1. 16  Tom King http://www.cacteamsolutions.com | 3/7/2006 3:49:37 PM

    At this time, the WMC trial requires you have a Workplace server to provision the Notes plug-in. However, it appears Notes folks have surfaced this issue in the WMC forum. Below is current post from Arthur Fontaine, WMC offering mgr. My response also follows.

    Re: Available tools

    Originally posted: 2006 March 03 03:35 PM

    afontaine

    We're working on a couple possible solutions and should have news soon.

    The first solution would be to reprovision the trial to show Notes options on the "launcher" bar, but that would be the only launcher icon surfaced (since others require a server we left the whole launcher thing hidden). That may be confusing to people who don't have Notes 7 installed.

    The second (preferred) solution is to extend the first option with a hosted Workplace Server trial as well, so that someone could connect and try ALL of the features (Documents, Activities, Applications etc.). For anyone with a Notes 7 client on Windows, that option would then appear amid the other icons business-as-usual. It's a little trickier for Linux, since the server will need to flow down the necessary Notes bits. That's what we are working through now.

    Stay tuned.

    Arthur Fontaine

    Offering Manager, Workplace Managed Client

    =========================================================

    Re: Available tools

    Originally posted: 2006 March 07 04:30 PM

    TDK74055 Post new reply

    I vote for option 2. Being a long time Lotus Notes/Domino supporter, I am very interested in the WMC to integrate existing Notes applications with other WMC applications. However, I don't have the time or patience to install/configure a Workplace host server just to provision the client. If I can't easily try out the existing WMC Notes plug-in, I will just wait for Hannover beta as I have lots of experience installing/configuring Domino servers!