Re: Lotus Symphony vs. OpenOffice

[Martin Rowe <dbg400.net@xxxxxxxxx>]

2009/9/16 Dan <dan27649@xxxxxxxxx>:
> Just saw the article in
> http://ibmsystemsmag.blogs.com/the_buzz/2009/09/ibm-actually-sort-of-sticks-it-to-the-man.html
> ( http://tinyurl.com/rbn9lk )
>
> It says that Symphony was "developed in cooperation with OpenOffice.org", so
> I am wondering if anyone has compared the two and has opinions they would
> like to share.  Currently, we use Open Office at home, but I am less than
> enthusiastic about using it, as Microsoft Office has been so ingrained into
> my soul for so many years, and continues to be.
>
> Can I trust that Symphony can be installed along side Microsoft Office or
> Open Office?

Lotus Symphony was based on the OpenOffice.org codebase around 1.0.3
time, and OOo is now at 3.1.1. I tried Symphony when it was released
as a beta and it was noticeably poorer with MS Office files than OOo
at the time (around vsn 2.4).

I've just this week installed Notes 8.5 on 64bit Ubuntu[1] at work,
and that includes Symphony. As yet I've not had a chance to try it
again, though I've been pleasantly surprised by how well Notes works.
I'll follow-up when I've tried it out.

Regards, Martin
[1] Only 32bit is officially supported, but there are a few
workarounds that get it installed and running without much effort.