Talk:Lotus Software

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is part of WikiProject Macintosh. This means that the WikiProject has identified it as an article pertaining to the Macintosh, but is not currently working to improve it. WikiProject Macintosh itself is an attempt to improve, grow, standardize, and attain featured status for Wikipedia's articles related to Macintosh and Apple Inc. We need all your help, so join in today!
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the assessment scale.

I have a problem with this clause:

SmartSuite still ships by default with some Compaq and IBM laptops,

As a person who has owned a (horrid!) Compaq machine, I can say with 99% certainty that Compaq has never shipped Lotus SmartSuite with their PC's. I can say this for 1998 and later. In fact, the majority of the time I have used a computer it has came with Microsoft Works (the only execptions are my Dell XP box which has MS Office and my iBook which has AppleWorks).

hoshie 08:22, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The content of this article is not acurate. Lotus software is not a company. Instead it is only a brand name of the IBM software group.

Sorry I did not find the right words to change the article

Contents 1 Reason for lost dominance 2 Product not mentioned in document 3 Is it accurate to call Wang OFFICE host-based instead of client/server? 4 cuatro/Quattro "fact"

[edit] Reason for lost dominance

The statements in Diversification: "Lotus quickly lost its dominance in the desktop applications market with the transition to 32 bit applications running on Windows 95. Lotus was late in delivering its suite of 32 bit products and failed to capitalize on the transition to the new version of Windows." suggest the slow transition to 32 bit was the primary cause of market loss, while other factors were probably more important including that many US government agencies had standardized to MS brand Office products. I don't know of any studies of the impact of government brand name promotion or the extent of standardization. Until a study is done or found, I don't suggest any changes. The "failed to capitalize ..." statement could account for many dominance loss issues.

Dougleon 09:34, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Product not mentioned in document

A new product has just been released by IBM called Lotus Symphony. I did not get to read about what it does, but do read on it.

Also, remove my comment once this task has been completed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.76.188.9 (talk) 05:24, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is it accurate to call Wang OFFICE host-based instead of client/server?

Wang OIS systems used the Z80 processor in the workstation for an early form of client/server computing, but I don't know for sure whether the OFFICE code was purely executed on the VS server side. Anyone know?

I worked at Wang Labs, on Wang VS OFFICE. We had a family of products, which did in fact include OIS/Alliance OFFICE and PC OFFICE in addition to VS OFFICE. And around 1989, Wang started working on a product called Open OFFICE, which was a true client-server solution, but was delayed by several years and significantly impacted by Wang's declining position in the industry, so it never made much market impact. Anyhow, it is certainly arguable that OIS/Alliance OFFICE and PC OFFICE had some client/server characteristics -- but like cc:Mail, I think they basically used file-sharing architectures. At the time of the IBM acquisition, I recall that the industry drew a pretty strong distinction between file-share architectures and true client-server.

Perhaps the more accurate statement would be "rapidly making host-based and file-sharing products like.... obsolete", with the addition of cc:Mail to the list. A bit ironic, since by then cc:Mail was already owned by Lotus, but it was the leading file-share mail system. For now, I'm just going to wikify the mention of client-server, since there is an article on it.

[edit] cuatro/Quattro "fact"

This explanation seems overly complicated and nonsensical in its employment of Spanish as an intermediary. Quattro means "four" on its own, and this is widely known. I don't know if it's Italian or Latin or what, but its association with Spanish "cuatro" is consanguinity at best.

Also, since it's not even cited, I think it's an unreasonable stretch.

--63.166.226.83 17:29, 8 November 2007 (UTC)