tea & toast

Time to review Lotus Sametime working with Vista i think.

I work in a non-standard enviroment - we have no physical work space, and are almost entirely void of paperwork. Yes it's quite hard to believe a company without an office, let alone with very little paper.

Most of this is achieved using Lotus Sametime. While Sametime isn't overly different to MSN Messenger and the like, it does include a few simple features which makes working in a virtual office a lot easier.

The common features of chat programs are present;

• custom emoticons


• text chat, with names and time stamps, and logging


• audio chat


• online status settings


• client side nicknames


• whiteboard

These features are rather unimaginative, except the custom emitcons have 'palletes' (collections), however there doesn't seem to be a simple way to switch between palletes, or identify which "" from the palletes you wanted to show - a bit disappointing as it was possibly a clever feature. Another disappointment is a recent update which forces a window to top of the pile when you receive a message, which can really get in the way - would be nice if they changed it to the standard flashing on the task bar.

On Vista, Sametime seems to be quite stable during run time... the only problems i have are when i try to turn it off! It quite often crashes while closing, leaving you with a nice long error, that fills out right off of the screen. Doesn't seem to affect chat logs or anything, so is just a nuisance. Likewise... starting Sametime up takes quite awhile.... a lot longer than any other chat program, though i'm not sure if this is a Vista or general issue. I've notice a few quirks in Vista... occasionally a log will be made that cannot scroll - not quite sure why, and my log-in password will not be remembered, which again these problems aren't major, just annoying.

The features that work well for business are around meetings and alerts, You can schedule online meetings which is definitely a plus in terms of transitioning real life habits into virtual ones. And alerts are particully useful, allowing you to recieve an alert telling you a user has come off away status etc, if you have been needing to talk to them.

Other than the usual quite basic tools of white board, which are useful for exampling very rough design concepts, there is a feature which saves me lots of time and effort. A screenshot tool allows you to select a portion of your screen, then paste it directly into your chat. The quality of the image sent may not always be that great, but for work like "Do you want more margin here?" i can quickly screenshot the area, so my boss knows exactly what i am talking about. I can provide up to date screens of what i am working on in just a few seconds, rather than saving an image, resizing it, compressing it and attaching it to an email.

So i would have to say... Sametime is not particully exciting, it has all the standard features, visually could do with some work, and has it's quirks but the screenshot feature really does make online graphic work a lot simpler, and provides a more formal environment than MSN or Skype to work in, which is encouraging, and a tool well worth considering for speeding up visual communication in virtual environments.

So go on, give it a go.

Alex