Lotus Notes 8.5 Beta 1 is on my computer

Last working day in May and we have this wonderful surprise. The complete download (client, designer, administrator) has „just“ 600MB, installation is as easy as usual but I wasn’t able to install it over my 8.0.1 Czech version. The installation went fine, there was some error at the end (yes, I’m like a normal user – some error) and after that the installation said „Everything is OK“. But I wasn’t able to run the client. Uninstall everything, delete the rest and install again and it is working.

Lotus Notes 8.5 beta 1

The start time is amazing, it is so quick compared to 8.0.1 and I don’t remember the previous versions. I got the same „Application error“ as probably everyone else but after that, no problem. There is a lot of new things in preferences (it’s really huge list now), I’m not able to connect to IBM Sametime server (extst.ibm.com) again (well it wasn’t working very well for me in 8.0.1 either).

The administration client still looks the same (there is a new Vault ID section) but the designer client is completely new. It’s a bit dark with some new tabs at bottom, you have to double click at places you didn’t need to do it in previous versions and I hate the fact when you click in the middle of scroll bar that it move just a bit as if you clicked on the arrow of scroll bar. I’m used to just by clicking there but it doesn’t work 🙁 There is also some problem with File menu, where is a lot of extra lines, there is place for 4 recent applications (just 4 and you can see the blank space if you opened just one in history), but otherwise there is a lot of new stuff.

Lotus Domino Designer 8.5 beta 1

After 5 minutes playing I could say – I like for the first view and will see more in feature.

Leave a Reply