The fact is that Outlook is often the first email software people start with, so why change if it does the job?

In addition, when people try the Notes client, they are flooded by the number of features for mail but also for IM, applications, calendar, and have to manage the Notes ID, replication and locations.

Notes 8.5, with more features, menus and icons, does add to the complexity. This is why I'm in favor of a dramatic cleanup of the Notes interface in order to:

• Get only mail features when you use Notes for mail only. By the way, there's no need for separate clients for mail, application, Sametime, and so on. A single Notes client with a wizard at startup and options in Preferences, allowing to activate some hidden features would do the job.

• Remove the duplicate features. A feature must be accessible from a single place that is consistent for the whole product

• Redesign the management of the various Notes modules and applications (I'm always upset to find the same bugs since V3 in the Workspace for example).

Although Outlook is a better choice for users in need of basic email features, if you're used to the feature-rich interface of Domino, the power of the editor and the outstanding replication, then you'll miss them much if moving to Outlook.

Conclusion
Considering the features only, I would have given the advantage to the Notes client but if I consider the way Microsoft "sells" Outlook, the advantage is clearly on the Microsoft side. I'll conclude by saying that Microsoft makes a lot of money on weak Exchange servers by distributing free Outlook clients. An approach to the market that IBM may possibly consider...

Remote Web access
If I had to evaluate remote browser access based on previous versions of iNotes, Microsoft would be the clear winner. There's just no debate about that and I just couldn't consider iNotes as a professional solution.

With iNotes in 8.5, things aren't as clear anymore. The iNotes client seems way superior, in term of features, look and feel, and user friendliness. However, scalability issues may become a show stopper for some deployments. Some further testing would be necessary to provide a final answer, which may also vary depending on each company's requirements.

I'm not convinced by the Full, Lite and Ultralite modes of iNotes, especially the last one. Despite the fact that dropping some features as a trade for making the application faster is a good idea, I think that the interface should look the same, which isn't true for the Ultralite version.

Also, the configuration of the iNotes interface not only has to be done again but differs much from the Notes client. This, once again, demonstrates the lack of integration and communication between development teams.

Last, the iNotes client seems a bit slower than Outlook which is understandable due to emulation in Notes.

Conclusion
I really miss my Notes client when having to work with Outlook, and iNotes has improved much. However, with millions of end users needing a simple email client, remotely accessible from anywhere can't be ignored. Moreover, remote access from a browser is a must and proposing different interfaces and configuration from the Notes and iNotes clients is, in my opinion a bad design choice.