Re: [Thinkpad] Smart Suite (was T43: Norton Systemworks BasicEdition )

George,

I think you are a little over the top. There are still maintenance
updates to Smart Suit being released. The last one for the OS2 version
was released about 3 months ago -- and I have not had any problems reading
any MS word files with it. Or excell for that matter.

And don't ignore the fact that they are updating Symphony, and making it
free.

In <629F9C32DE94044297BEB4D49E2ABD0102BEC545@be05-vsms.vsms.state.vt.us>,
on 11/07/2007
   at 07:46 AM, "Colgrove, George" <George.Colgrove@state.vt.us> said:

>SmartSuite in the late 1990's early 2000's was comparably superior to MS
>Office and in many ways still is. The issue with the software is that
>the computer media never even wrote a review of it (and what little they
>did do never did it any service it deserved - a lot of the times
>emphasizing it's small user base and insignificance in the market). They
>rather preferred to leave those columns to slowly kill WordPerfect and
>company (or companies) and promote MS Office. Perception goes far in
>this industry and since SmartSuite never got the light of day, IBM
>reduced it to a piece of paper buried within the few other pieces of
>paper (or was it just a line of text in some setup document?) when you
>buy an IBM computer - giving you a phone number to call for a CD - to be
>shipped at a later date.

>Sure, you can still buy SmartSuite, but it is the same package that has
>been available for several years now. No updates have been made to the
>suite for years.

>Of all the stuff it could do in the day and with the advancements other
>Office Suites have made since then, I can only imagine what SmartSuite
>could be today - if it had gotten better visibility. Lotus and
>eventually IBM had an incredible ability to take the best of each
>component they acquired and beautifully apply them to the rest of the
>suite.

>Acquisitions that made SmartSuite:
>Lotus -> Lotus 1-2-3 (original Lotus SS Component) (?)
>-> Freelance Graphics
>Samda (Ami-Pro) -> WordPro (Where we got the SmartIcons)
>Approach Software -> Approach (Where we got the Info Box)

>Some of this stuff even made it into OS/2.

>Now, IBM made some mistakes along the way that contributed to the demise
>of this software, but had it got better coverage (fair coverage) it would
>still be a viable competitor in the arena. What do we have now? MS
>Office, WordPerfect Suite (which has become a MS Office clone -
>complete with MS Visual Basic!) and OpenOffice (A free Office suite -
>again behaving like a clone of MS Office!)

>Bottom line: The idea of having all formatting capabilities in an easy to
>use simple and single place (i.e. the Info Box) is gone. Instead, we now
>have to navigate through menus and dialog boxes regardless of what we use
>to process data, word, graphics or numbers! What took SmartSuite a click
>or two to do, takes MS Office and others several! It wasn't competition
>that killed this idea, it was market bullying performed by M$ and their
>Ziff-Davis Partners.

>Some credit: the latest incarnation of MS Office has made significant
>strides in the area of ease of use, but still has light years to go to
>match up with the ease of use Lotus SmartSuite offered. (But isn't that
>true of all their stuff?!)

>George
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: thinkpad-bounces@stderr.org [mailto:thinkpad-bounces@stderr.org] On
>Behalf Of Rosen, Robert (NIH/NIAMS) [E]
>Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 5:40 PM
>To: thinkpad@stderr.org
>Subject: Re: [Thinkpad] Smart Suite (was T43: Norton Systemworks
>BasicEdition )

>I believe you still get a free license for Smart Suite (and Lotus Notes)
>with each Thinkpad.

>____________________________
>Robert Rosen
>
>>Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 14:00:31 -0500
>>From: "Colgrove, George" <George.Colgrove@state.vt.us>
>>Subject: Re: [Thinkpad] T43: Norton Systemworks Basic Edition <--> AVG
>>To: <thinkpad@stderr.org>
>>>RayBay:
>>>
>>>"Who watches over them besides Consumer Reports.."
>>
>>And even Consumer Reports never really touches on software. They do
>>mediocre coverage on hardware - practically none on software. I think
>>this is why M$ got away with the crap they issue every year.
>>
>>Though other publishers of software made mistakes in marketing, this
>was
>>not the biggest slice of the pie that killed their software. It was
>the
>>magazines that controlled perception of the competing products.
>>Ziff-Davis was no more than an extension of Microsoft's FUD department.
>>
>>I blame mostly the heavily biased computing media on the death of
>>
>>GEOS - GeoWorks - my overall favorite OS (when kept in relativity of
>the
>>time it was issued)
>>OS/2 - IBM
>>DR-DOS - Digital Research/Novell
>>SmartSuite - IBM
>>
>>George
>>

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Received on Wed Nov 7 09:43:09 2007