Macintosh users, rejoice! Sort of.
Macintosh users will be happy to know that their client will finally be on par with the Windows client. They were forgotten or ignored when Lotus released R4.6, and this has been a thorn in the side of administrators and developers that have had to accommodate this environment until the release of R5. Unfortunately, the Macintosh client has not been released simultaneously with the Windows-based client. Instead, Mac users will be able to obtain an updated beta until the release of that platform.

The Web/Java client
I've purposely not discussed one half of the R5 equation -- the Web/Java client. I'll do this in a future article. This client is vitally important, and at that point, I'll discuss options for those of you who will be looking at deployments of R5 in Web-only environments, as well as options for Unix users and others who have been left without the proprietary client as an option.

The Universal Client?
Lotus is positioning the Notes R5 client as an independent email client as it is no longer tied by proprietary protocols to the Domino server environment. When used within a Domino server, Notes R5 will provide the same groupware and application development environment that has made Lotus Notes successful.

Outside the Domino server environment, Notes R5 is now a fully functional Internet standards-based client. Supported are the standard POP3, IMAP4 protocols, required for Internet email usage. LDAP is supported for directory services (address books), NNTP support for newsgroups, native MIME support, native HTML for generation of rich mail content, X.509 for certificates, and S/MIME support for email-oriented encryption.

At last, Lotus will release a client that can compete as a stand-alone email package. Lotus Notes has had the perception that unless organizations were using it for groupware functionality they were wasting their money. The R5 Notes client has the ability to change this attitude.

Microsoft has had considerable success positioning the Outlook 98 client as a stand-alone Internet standard client and PIM (Personal Information Manager). It's clear that Lotus wishes to compete in this space, and the Notes R5 client has the functionality to do it. Outlook 98 doesn't support using both its proprietary and Internet standard-based protocols simultaneously, which the R5 Notes client does, so Lotus has an edge here. However, for Lotus to compete in this space, the client (or at least a scaled down version of it) must be made more available (read: free or darned close to it). Lotus has given no indication that this will happen, but it's clear that Notes as a client is competing against the free Outlook Express client available from Microsoft.

Calendaring/Scheduling
With regards to calendaring/scheduling , the R4 Notes client was fully capable of competing head to head with offerings from rivals Microsoft and Novell. With R5, this functionality has been greatly enhanced. Attention to detail is key within this area of the client. For example, the annoying sliding bars used to select date ranges within R4 have been replaced, a view of the calendar shows meeting starting and end times. In another example of extended functionality, resource scheduling embraces the concept of ownership; which will grant control of resources to specific users or groups. Now your conference room can't be scheduled unless you want it to be.