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37 Comments

• Martin Iturbide said on Oct 27, 2011 4:36 PM:

  You need to make it look cool !!!!
  
  The feature against feature with MS Office had never been the goal of Lotus Symphony, and it is good. It is very hard to find people that uses more then the 30% of all MS Office features.
  
  1) So, the thing that may make a change to Lotus Symphony is making it look more modern than Office 2010. If you compare the office suite just from the visual point of view, MS Office looks very modern and appealing.
  

• Martin Iturbide said on Oct 27, 2011 4:38 PM:

  3)Technical: Make Lotus Symphony opens most of docx, xlsx, and pptx as perfect as possible compatible with Office 2010. You don't need to go further on office features that should be supported, you just need the basic to open pptx graphics, docx tables, etc.
  
  Make a exercise yourself. Grab any of the presentation you have on pptx and try to open it on Lotus Symphony. You will see that even the basic presentation shows errors when you open it on Lotus Symphony.
  

• Martin Iturbide said on Oct 27, 2011 4:39 PM:

  4) Aggressive Community Sharing: Make a Lotus Symphony online course available for free to users. Make some material, student guide, student workbook, instructor guide and workbook and release the material on a Creative Commons license that will allow anybody to profit making Lotus Symphony courses, and allow to create derivative works of that course material.
  

• Martin Iturbide said on Oct 27, 2011 4:40 PM:

  5) Open Source. Share all the code with Apache OpenOffice.org (like IBM announce it before) and make Lotus Symphony complete open source to allow more people to join and include features on Lotus Symphony code. Keep releasing most of the code as Open Source.
  

• Martin Iturbide said on Oct 27, 2011 4:41 PM:

  6) Find a new Killer Feature for the Office Suite. Maybe it is time to include a strategy map diagramming tool like FreeMind or like Websphere Compass. Other idea is to possible integrating a Project Management software or more complex diagramming software (BPMn?) in the suite so it can contain more value than the basic Office and people will start using Lotus Symphony because of that feature that their don't have in the standard Office suite.
  

• Martin Iturbide said on Oct 27, 2011 4:42 PM:

  7) The cloud... but since MS Office is the king of office "on premise" suite, everybody is trying to compete in this area. Maybe improving LotusLive Symphony and offering it on the cloud and also offering it "on premise" as part of Lotus Connection will be cool.
  

• Martin Iturbide said on Oct 27, 2011 4:48 PM:

  8) Change the name of the product from "Lotus Symphony" to "IBM Symphony"...... ha ha ha.. dumb joke ;)
  

• Guest said on Oct 29, 2011 1:46 PM:

  Speed, speed, speed!!!
  

• Del Piero said on Oct 30, 2011 1:38 PM:

  - Leave 'IBM' out of the product name, so make it 'Lotus Symphony',as IBM doesn't have a good name in developing visual attractive, user friendly applications for the Windows platform (for consumers).
  
  I associate IBM with old legacy business systems, so the name IBM doesn't make the product look modern and dynamic.
  
  - Nice colors are used in Symphony, nicer than the Microsoft Office suite, and way nicer than OpenOffice or Libre Office, which look old and dusty. Nowadays the visual appearace of an application is something that is very very important for consumers. Lotus have understood that correctly.
  
  The home screen looks awesome. Maybe the layout of the controls should be more like Microsoft's Visual Studio (but don't change the colors)
  

• Del Piero said on Oct 30, 2011 1:48 PM:

  Layout of the controls should not be more like Visual Studio's layout, I take that back.
  
  Option to hide the menu bar would be nice, because I have a small 13'' screen.
  

• Del Piero said on Oct 30, 2011 2:03 PM:

  Better marketing; I only got to know the existence of Lotus Symphony via a site called www.gratissoftware.nu.
  
  I'm convinced that a lot of consumers will move (from OO or LO) to Lotus Symphony, and MS Office home users will definitely be interested in the product if they see the appealing ui and if they try it, it comes to functionality that is most used and ease of use.
  
  For businesses you have to make it easy to migrate to symphony.
  

• Del Piero said on Oct 30, 2011 2:05 PM:

  For businesses you have to make it easy to migrate to symphony. I have encountered erroneous conversion if an ms office doc that is built on a complex template is converted to odt file format. I don't know if a lot of businesses use complex templates. I still have the MS Office Starter Edition that was shipped with my laptop installed, because that's the only way to edi such a document.
  

• Udo said on Oct 30, 2011 2:20 PM:

  There are still too many functions in the dialogs that are not available in the properties sidebar.
  
  For example the positioning of a graphics box.
  
  In Apple Pages, for example, there are no dialogs with Ok buttons.
  
  Alle functions are located in the info box.
  

• Del Piero said on Oct 30, 2011 2:25 PM:

  So I do not totally agree with bullet 3 of Martin Iturbide, because businesses who use Microsoft Offce perhaps hesitate to migrate to Symphony if conversion is not perfect although they can reduce the number of MS licences.
  

• Martin Edgar said on Nov 2, 2011 10:30 AM:

  I'd love it of someone with the know-how could integrate a Thunderbird-style (and compatible) mail/calendar module. (i.e. iCal/vCard compatible).
  
  One of the appeals of Symphony for me is that it resurrects the old Star Office "do everything in one place" concept.
  

• Brian Utesch said on Nov 3, 2011 9:43 AM:

  Thanks everyone for the feedback! Make sure you complete the online survey and pass along to your colleagues. Thank you!
  

• Del Piero said on Nov 3, 2011 6:20 PM:

  The user interface would look nicer if the tabs and 'New' button had sharp corners in stead of round corners.
  
  It would be nicer if the height of the tabs (click area) was a little bit smaller. Look i.e. at the latest Firefox; the tabs look great.
  
  I miss the opion to hide the system tray icon, in OO that possible.
  
  In Windows 7, you can only close the app (when it's running) from the windows desktop taskbar, you can not pin it to the taskbar. However, you can pin it to the tasbar by rightclicking the shortcut in the windows start menu, but then, when the app is opened, 2 app icons are being displayed in the window taskbar.
  

• Del Piero said on Nov 3, 2011 6:36 PM:

  I do not like the application's icon, but I do like the Lotus Live icon (in the Lotus Live logo); it looks very modern and attractive.
  

• Brad Pentecost said on Nov 7, 2011 6:17 AM:

  Need a DBase application, as well as a drawing platform. The math program in OO could possibly be incorporated into the existing word document application. Allowing system colors to run in your applications may also have some aesthetic appeal for users. PDF editing, not just PDF creation, would also give your suite a capability that propels it above the others out there. More and more collaboration is being done in that format these days.
  

• Tyler Holman said on Nov 10, 2011 11:12 AM:

  Lotus Symphony is a wonderful competitor to paid office suits, and it leaves both OpenOffice and LibreOffice in the dust. For free software, it's really beautiful. It looks modern. Under the hood performance is good; you need to focus on keeping the looks of the software up to do, and making the interface even more intuitive. Update all of the design to make sure that it can compete with MS Office. And remember that not everyone who uses Symphony is a business; I am a student and part time journalist/writer, and I use it because it has such an intuitive interface and looks so much better than OOo. I know that Symphony itself doesn't make money and that businesses are your main market, but don't forget people like me!
  

• Tyler Holman said on Nov 10, 2011 11:12 AM:

  Lotus Symphony is a wonderful competitor to paid office suits, and it leaves both OpenOffice and LibreOffice in the dust. For free software, it's really beautiful. It looks modern. Under the hood performance is good; you need to focus on keeping the looks of the software up to do, and making the interface even more intuitive. Update all of the design to make sure that it can compete with MS Office. And remember that not everyone who uses Symphony is a business; I am a student and part time journalist/writer, and I use it because it has such an intuitive interface and looks so much better than OOo. I know that Symphony itself doesn't make money and that businesses are your main market, but don't forget people like me!
  

• mike leover said on Nov 12, 2011 9:59 AM:

  If anything... the future of office suite packages is now its value as a cloud- based-in-browser contained app that will be fully supported and never abandoned like what google did with reader and what this business about white space they are doing to google docs. the look of GoogleDocs is awful and the new versions of Google Docs are buggy and slow. THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO SHINE AND RELIEVE THE ANXIETY we all feel using and relying on google. We need a stable reliable web office app that we can trust to be with us tomorrow and not suddenly disappear or change on the whim of the owners. I hope you are listening to your users because we need this YESTERDAY
  

• moshe said on Nov 15, 2011 7:05 AM:

  I like Symphony as it is, but better import/export of MS Office documents will be perfect.
  

• Anbarasu Munusamy said on Nov 16, 2011 12:31 AM:

  Hi Team, Kudos for Lotus Symphony!
  
  Can we access and maintain Lotus Symphony online?
  
  Ofcourse the access shall be restricted to IBM networks
  
  This would help us in so many ways
  

• Antonio said on Nov 16, 2011 8:20 AM:

  Please:
  
  1) make a portable \ virtualized version available;
  
  2) skin editor;
  
  3) ability to save a doc \ presentation \ spreadsheet as a HTML5-compatible web page (and even embed multimedia);
  
  Thanks for reading!
  

• ddobson said on Nov 18, 2011 6:26 PM:

  gain and retain market share:
  
  make it:
  
  Free and open source
  
  Platform independent - installation - not cloud-based
  
  open document format compatible
  
  Side-by-side document comparison (Multiple Document Interface or similar live 'interoperability')
  
  With viavoice dictation (speech recognition).
  
  spreadsheets
  
  with potentially paid subscription / upgrades for:
  
  charts / presentation add-ons
  
  desktop publishing
  
  database extensions
  
  corporate-use extensions (mail-merg functions)
  

• Erik said on Nov 22, 2011 2:50 PM:

  4 improvements in order of importance:
  
  1) Add Stability
  
  2) Add Speed
  
  3) Add better documentation on the script language
  
  4) Add Functions
  
  Cooperate with Open Office and Libre Office ( if possible, melt these 3 together to one product )
  
  Try to keep the Symphony user IF ( maybe give the user the opportunity to switch between different interfaces)
  

• Charles Buron said on Dec 4, 2011 9:22 AM:

  Lotus Symphony is a breath of fresh air! and it's FREE for a personal user like myself. Just a few suggestions -
  
  1. Bring out a 64 bit version, if possible
  
  2.Do not change the design of the Interface, keeping it simple with total user control is the right way to go.
  
  3. Be able to create a sub document within a master document direct from the navigator would be helpful, At present you can only add a sub document.
  
  4. Keep the whole of Symphony as a standalone installation and not reliant on so called 'cloud computing'
  

• Charles Burton said on Dec 4, 2011 9:36 AM:

  APOLOGIES _ INCORRECT SPELLING OF MY NAME IN TITLE _ LOTUS - PLEASE REMOVE PREVIOUS COMMENT IF POSSIBLE
  
  Lotus Symphony is a breath of fresh air! and it's FREE for a personal user like myself. Just a few suggestions -
  
  1. Bring out a 64 bit version, if possible
  
  2.Do not change the design of the Interface, keeping it simple with total user control is the right way to go.
  
  3. Be able to create a sub document within a master document direct from the navigator would be helpful, At present you can only add a sub document.
  
  4. Keep the whole of Symphony as a standalone installation and not reliant on so called 'cloud computing'
  

• Dezigner said on Dec 4, 2011 6:35 PM:

  Thanks so much for the functional, free, light-weight and nice looking office suite !
  
  I tried its Windows version and found it very convenient that the control has similarity with MSOfficeXP and graphic editors.
  
  Let me wish you add the unprintable characters - Tab, Enter, formatting Find&Replace.
  
  Inconveniences are the netbook screens (window title and tabs) and 1024x768 (side panel)
  
  Thanks again for pdf integration and IBM stability !
  

• Marcin said on Dec 7, 2011 4:57 AM:

  I would like to have more colors for fonts etc.
  
  I would prefer if there would be all RAL Colors useable, they are standard
  

• parhyang sj. said on Dec 7, 2011 6:37 AM:

  a word processor without Math Equation Editor, how can it be?
  

• Martina Aulehla said on Dec 10, 2011 3:08 PM:

  I have worked with Lotus SmartSuite for more than ten years. Now I have an Win7 32bit -Computer. Lotus Smartsuite doesn't like it. So I have to search for an alternative Office-Package. I have many files in WordPro (Writer), some in 123 (Spreadsheets) and some, but important in Approach (Database). So: please give me a chance to migrate to Lotus Symphony by importing my old Lotus-SmartSuite files to it!
  
  Thank You!
  

• Tina said on Dec 12, 2011 1:43 AM:

  Lotus Symphony has been a well-kept secret for too long!! But make some more improvements and everyone will be clamouring for it.
  
  The automated mail-merge and email feature is SO useful, but I'd love it even better if it would allow other documents to be attached as part of the email.
  
  Formatting to be made a lot easier. I have lots of trouble re-formatting numbering, boxes, fonts, etc when I copy & paste from Word into Symphony.
  

• ravi nagvekar said on Dec 21, 2011 3:59 PM:

  Lotus symphony is really lightweight feature reach office suite..I hope IBM will continue working on it.
  
  I have lots of my friends shift from MS office to Symphony..
  

• Jefferson Martin said on Jan 9, 2012 10:56 AM:

  This product is a high school computer club project, right? Just trying to create a spreadsheet is torture and the plugin to LotusLive is a joke which deadlocks with an order to check a failed login but no way to do it.
  
  This is not a good experience for us and we are not even pros at this.
  

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