[Two weeks ago I shared a link to productivity blogger Jason Spencer's rant against Microsoft for their emasculation (his words, not mine) of their productivity tools.

Jason is a journalist and professor at the Art Institute of Houston and he recently reached out to me to share his interest in IBM Notes as a productivity platform . He said that he was planning to do a long term experiment by migrating his life to IBM Notes/Smart Cloud. I like the way he explores and writes about productivity topics he's passionate about so I encouraged him to share his experience and I invited him to submit guest blog posts about his experience for the benefit of the Notes on Productivity readers.

Jason's first guest blog post is here. Jason's second installment update is below.]

IBM Notes True Cross Platform Support

Despite all the challenges I faced setting up IBM Notes, I chose Notes as my primary life management application because IBM has tried to make Notes a truly ubiquitous cross platform PIM. IBM chose to pursue simplicity in Note’s mobile device support-- like Google Apps for Business, IBM Notes Traveler (the IBM Notes push email and PIM solution for mobile devices)  embraces Microsoft Exchange Active Sync Protocol for maximum interoperability. Furthermore, IBM Notes Traveler offers software for iOS and Android; and support for Blackberry and Windows phone platforms.  Similarly, Notes also offers a robust web interface far more comparable to its native client then Outlook Web Access 2013 (OWA) to Microsoft Outlook. When it comes to desktop operating systems, you can run the full IBM Notes Client natively on all major operating systems --Windows, Mac, and Linux flavors of Red Hat and Ubuntu.

Nevertheless, if you are coming from a Microsoft Outlook world like me, you will find IBM Notes to come with a hefty learning curve, not so much in usability that is easy to pick up in a few minutes, but in the power of its flexibility—everything about IBM Notes with the right training is highly customizable and adaptable for the end user-it’s more of an application development platform then merely a PIM.

One of the most powerful tools I love about IBM Notes email is its ability to automatically convert emails to tasks and calendar events with the right click of a mouse. Another aspect of IBM Notes that turns anyone into a power user is IBM Notes shortcut keys in the windows application which allow you to access almost any feature and create new action or function with the minimum effort of a few key strokes.
 

You can follow Jason Spencer on his blog.

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