The Domino Chick

Symphony as a daily tool

Sunday, March 23rd, 2008

When IBM Lotus announced Symphony as a stand-alone, free suite of tools, I was very happy, for a number of reasons. First, because I love the open-source movement and what it has contributed to computing, and I am proud that IBM both contributes to and utilizes open-source projects. And second, because I don't use Office, and now I don't have to justify that choice. :-)

Those of you who know me or work with me know that I haven't had the Microsoft Office suite installed on my current laptop - ever. Before Notes 8 went beta, I had been using OpenOffice.org as my main suite of productivity tools, and since the integrated tools became available I have been using those. (Symphony and the Notes 8 productivity editors are based on the core OpenOffice.org office suite code and use Eclipse and Expeditor to deliver the user experience.)

I have built every presentation I've done in the past 3+ years in OpenOffice, Notes 8, or Symphony. In fact, I am using Symphony spreadsheets and documents to help me plan my upcoming wedding! You should see the insane wedding-related spreadsheets I have created using this thing. We even wrote the ceremony and vows in a Symphony document - and then saved it as a Word document so we could share it with our officiant.

There are some things that I'd like to see improved, specifically with regards to interoperability with MS Office products, because some formatting and features tend to get a little messed up when you change back and forth between the MS and open document formats. However, I find it to be a fantastic tool and have successfully replaced MS Office as my daily office productivity suite. I suggest all IBMers, partners, and customers consider doing the same.

I mean, hey, why not? It's free!

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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 06:15:00 PM
Location: New York, NY