The open-source suite, which was updated with a Version 2.3 release on Monday, has been downloaded more than 96 million times, according to its developers. hasn't posed a big threat to Office thus far.
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Ironically, Ray Ozzie, who led development of Lotus Symphony as well as Lotus Notes, is now chief software architect at Microsoft Corp., a position he took over from Chairman Bill Gates in June 2006 as part of a plan for Gates to relinquish his day-to-day responsibilities at the software vendor. The most recent update, Version 9.8, was released in late 2002, and IBM no longer actively markets SmartSuite, although it does maintain the software, having released a package of bug fixes as recently as a year ago. Despite IBM's backing, SmartSuite failed to make a dent against Office's market hegemony.
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ODF, a rival to Microsoft Corp.'s Office Open XML document format, has been ratified as a standard by the Geneva-based ISO standards body.īefore Lotus was bought by IBM, it also developed a Windows-based office suite called SmartSuite. The only real issue that we found during our test was the fact that sometimes IBM Lotus Symphony does not run that smoothly and it is quite demanding in terms of the system resources it uses.Īll in all, IBM Lotus Symphony offers a pretty good alternative to other office suites and thanks to its solid feature pack it can accommodate the needs of a great number of users.Koplowitz said that "in my dream world," Lotus Symphony, Google Apps and Sun's StarOffice suite - which is based on - will all be interoperable with one another through the Open Document Format (ODF) for Office Applications. In addition to that, another useful aspect is that you can extend the capabilities of IBM Lotus Symphony with the help of dedicated plug-ins. Plug-in supportĪ nice feature is the integrated web browser that can open webpages in the main window, without you having to use another piece of software. As expected, you will find functions common to many similar programs such as a spell checker, calculator, brushes, formulas, transition effects, and many others tools. IBM Lotus Symphony includes three different utilities, namely “Documents,” “Spreadsheets” and “Presentations,” each serving its very own purpose. Create custom text bodies, spreadsheets and presentations Not to mention that you will have to spend some time picking the tools you need, something that's become almost a common thing when talking about this kind of complex software.
Long-lasting setup processĪs expected, installation takes some time but only because we are dealing with an office suite and there are a lot of files to be copied on the computer. In essence, IBM Lotus Symphony provides almost the same functions as the other suites yet there are differences that reside in design, as well as in some of the features bundled in each available component.
IBM Lotus Symphony is one of the players with a fair share of dedicated users, even if it does not really challenge Microsoft Office. Opening Microsoft Office 2007 documents that are protected by a password.Ĭurrently the office suite software category is dominated by the one developed by Microsoft as it is the most used worldwide, yet there are other solutions that fight for the same leading position as well.