Ed, Aside from my personal desires, I do not see this as business critical for IBM/Lotus today, but I do see a shift in what users will come to expect in the future. I agree that, in the business, market Tablets are still niche oriented and vertical market. However, the once-large price difference between a laptop and a Tablet PC form factor has diminished rapidly. As it does, more tablets will be sold and more people will expect to use their applications with a tablet.
I find that (right now) people either "get" tablets or they don't - kind of like Lotus Notes. I did not "get" tablets at first (in fact, I'll admit that in 1991 when Lotus offered to pay for my certification, I did not fully "get" Lotus Notes either). My experience has been that if I can get someone to set down and let me show them what Lotus Notes can do for them, most, if not all, suddenly "get it.:" I think Tablet PC's are in the same adoption curve.
Right now, many people, I think, see the Tablet PC as a glorified laptop. I did. Until, after reading all the hype, I bought one and challenged myself to use it. It's creative, innovative, and addictive, (I hope that when you blog about your new (Apple?) Tablet someday, that you'll remember I said this..
So, would I stop the Notes team from working on R8 just to add ink support?
No.
Would I make sure that they understand the possibilities of this platform? [and strongly encourage them to add ink support?]
Absolutely.
As an eProductivity Specialist, I'm always looking for or trying to create ways to make my weekly review easier. I think that digital ink is one way to increase the productive value of Lotus Notes and I plan to bend the ear of anyone at IBM that will listen.
What do you think?
Discussion/Comments (2):
I admit it. I don't get Lotus Notes. I'm forced to use it in my new job and I just don't care for it at all, especially coming from Outlook (and using Outlook 2007 for my personal email). I know that some departments are using a lot of the Notes features, but my team pretty much just uses the email/calendar capability, and I find it lags pretty far behind what you get with Exchange/Outlook.
I'm sure that enabling ink in Notes would help, but I'm not sure that even that would be enough to make me like it.
Josh Einstein (http://www.josheinstein.com): 5/29/2007 4:51:15 PM
Sorry to respond to such an old post.
Lotus Notes could be ink enabled pretty easily. In fact, I actually have working concepts using the COM API. It's not nearly as integrated as my Outlook add-in, but it's better than nothing.
But really Lotus Notes is such a pain to work with and use that I don't see myself spending alot of effort to turn it into a product.