Vowe and Andrew Pollack have drawn parallels between Vista and Notes 8.

Whilst both can perform slowly on lower end hardware, and whilst both had later service releases that are claimed to improve performance, I think that the comparison is stretched.

Here's my responses to Andrew's points:

• Point 1: People asked for a better Notes interface, AND asked for a better Mac client, AND asked for a Linux client. The Eclipse platform was the best way to deliver this as quickly as possible. We did ask for Notes 8, and I can't see how Notes 8 could have been done without Eclipse.
• Point 2: Notes 8 has added what people wanted, and will add even more in future. Superior extendibility, composite applications, and it's all going to be multi-platform.
• Point 3: If you're hitting issues with integration between the Eclipse and Notes code, then they're bugs. Report them - they are highly likely to be fixed!
• Point 4: To do the same things, users can install the Basic client. No further comment.
• Point 5: Apple would have done it better. OK, even Andrew admits that Apple's got nothing on Notes (or any other messaging/groupware stack), so this point is moot and I'm not going to make a big deal of it.

The Notes situation is not a good parallel with Vista, simply because the Notes Basic client option exists.

Feel you didn't ask for any of the new things and are getting a raw deal? Run Notes Basic. It's there, and it's free - the same license covers both.

Now, downgrading your OS is a whole different matter. Not all versions of Vista come with "downgrade rights" that allow you to use the same license for XP.

And there are some obvious places where the parallel with Vista breaks completely:

• Notes ONLY has compatibility issues forwards - not backwards! Vista can't say that. Again, if you have a backwards compatibility issue with a Notes application in Notes 8, get it logged as a bug with IBM...
• Notes has a strong, regular release cycle which is delivering improvements. Vista had problems, and Microsoft's solution was to either silence or quiet acknowledgement, with no real commitment to a timescale for fixes. Service Pack 1 arrived when they felt like shipping it. Domino/Notes has a long standing tradition of multiple releases per year, and those releases often deliver improvements - new features AND bug fixes. Notes Release 8.0.2 delivers speed increases and Notes UltraLite. And that was openly discussed, with timescales - it's almost a polar opposite to the Vista Service Pack 1 experience.
• The shifts within the Notes client architecture are strategic. Yes, they're major - but they're necessary for its long-term health. The underlying architecture was fine, but the client interface layers needed major work if they were to be modernised. Compare this with Vista, which had major compatibility issues due to architectural changes required due to poor architecture - which generated a lot more work for vendors writing software on the Windows platform. Notes 8 didn't require any such changes.

No matter which was I look at it, when I compare Notes 8 with Vista, it's not Vista that wins. Vista has had much bigger issues, and much harder ones to handle. And it has no option on its roadmap but to tough it out and hope that they get fixed as and when Microsoft feel like it.

Notes 8 != Vista

(Now that I've said that, I'll return to my blogging retirement again.)

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