IBM Lotus Symphony? Is it 1985 Again?
I guess IBM-Lotus is running out of ideas because they just reused the name of one of Lotus' biggest product flops from 1985: Lotus Symphony. Maybe they're going to claim this is part of their SOA re-use demonstrations. IBM Lotus Symphony is a rehash of OpenOffice.org (2.3.0 was just released yesterday, btw). But, since we already have StarOffice (the original) that is free as part of the Google Pack as well as OpenOffice.org itself, why do we need this IBM-Lotus fork? I also find it interesting that IBM recommends 1GB RAM even for the Linux version. I've run OpenOffice.org on Linux with far less RAM than that.
I'm not going to try this one. So, if anyone finds a compelling value proposition for this version of Symphony, please let me know.
FYI: The photo of the 1980s Lotus Symphony box comes from the LotusMuseum.com site.
Its worth trying even if
Its worth trying even if just for the unified interface. Documents of all types live in the same window. Side and top menu bars change contextually. The interface is nice and simple, and quite pleasing. I also find it a bit snappier; the load time falls in the middle of Office of OOo.