Book Review - IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 - The upgraders guide
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So, this review is a little later than most of my peers. It's been a busy month!
Like many bloggers, Packt Publishing were kind enough to ship me a copy of this book for review. So, what are my thoughts on the 8.5.1 upgrade guide? Honestly - I'm disappointed. When I heard that there were printed (printed!) books coming out around 8.5.1, I was really happy. Although it's not really a major factor in anyones purchasing decision, to wander into a bookstore and see books on the shelves for the latest version of Domino is a great thing. I also happen to have worked with one of the authors and know he's a good guy.
So, why am I disappointed? Well, two major reasons. One is that this book doesn't cover all the new features of 8.5.x. Things like Lotus Traveler are completely missing. That would be a bad omission for a Domino 8.0.1 book but for an 8.5 book? The presence of a separate chapter at the end regarding 8.5 says to be that this book was started back in 8.0.x days and simply updated when 8.5 shipped. Personally, I'd much rather the whole book was re-visited to give a consistent approach to the whole thing.
The second reason is that I didn't get the feeling that the upgrade from 6.x or 7.x to 8.5.x would be as big a benefit as it's really going to be for most customers. In many cases, reading the book I just wasn't excited by the prospect. Perhaps this book is targeted at people who have already upgraded, but I can imagine smaller customers buying this book to see if the upgrade is worthwhile. They might well decide it's not.
So, all in all, would I recommend this book? Well, it's certainly better than no book at all, that's for sure. However, I feel that in this case the outdated nature of some of the content does more harm than good. I'm sure that this is a by-product of the nature of printed materials - and that IBM might claim this is another reason to move to Wiki's and Infocenters. I don't buy that though. Other technologies can do it - so why not for Notes & Domino?
Bookmark :
So, this review is a little later than most of my peers. It's been a busy month!
Like many bloggers, Packt Publishing were kind enough to ship me a copy of this book for review. So, what are my thoughts on the 8.5.1 upgrade guide? Honestly - I'm disappointed. When I heard that there were printed (printed!) books coming out around 8.5.1, I was really happy. Although it's not really a major factor in anyones purchasing decision, to wander into a bookstore and see books on the shelves for the latest version of Domino is a great thing. I also happen to have worked with one of the authors and know he's a good guy.
So, why am I disappointed? Well, two major reasons. One is that this book doesn't cover all the new features of 8.5.x. Things like Lotus Traveler are completely missing. That would be a bad omission for a Domino 8.0.1 book but for an 8.5 book? The presence of a separate chapter at the end regarding 8.5 says to be that this book was started back in 8.0.x days and simply updated when 8.5 shipped. Personally, I'd much rather the whole book was re-visited to give a consistent approach to the whole thing.
The second reason is that I didn't get the feeling that the upgrade from 6.x or 7.x to 8.5.x would be as big a benefit as it's really going to be for most customers. In many cases, reading the book I just wasn't excited by the prospect. Perhaps this book is targeted at people who have already upgraded, but I can imagine smaller customers buying this book to see if the upgrade is worthwhile. They might well decide it's not.
So, all in all, would I recommend this book? Well, it's certainly better than no book at all, that's for sure. However, I feel that in this case the outdated nature of some of the content does more harm than good. I'm sure that this is a by-product of the nature of printed materials - and that IBM might claim this is another reason to move to Wiki's and Infocenters. I don't buy that though. Other technologies can do it - so why not for Notes & Domino?
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