...or Bend over and...

Regulars here probably know of my feelings for Lotus products. For those who don't, I loathe them.

Anyway, I had Outlook 2000 set up to access our ccMail 6.0 server. Over the last year, we've been migrating to Notes (5.01). During the Fourth of July weekend, the ccMail post office had an apparently significant problem and, without telling me I was switched over to Notes. This meant that for the last three days of last week, I had no office email. What follows is a rant (with a question or two thrown in for anyone who might be able to help).

After finally getting Notes installed yesterday, I had my first personal experience with the login dialog. Are they kidding? That thing (along with the rest of the product for various reasons) belongs in the "User Interface Hall of Shame" if it isn't already (Anyone got that URL handy so I can share it?). When you press a key, you get a random number of Xs. So the first part of this is: Does anyone know how to bypass the thing? In ccMail (and in Outlook) I could supply my user name and password as command line parameters. Before I go searching for the answer in what passes for help there, does anyone know how to accomplish this in Notes? I've tried the same technique and I know that it doesn't work. Also for some reason, I get prompted now and again to re-supply the password. It's made me so angry that I've forgotten to note (no pun intended) the circumstances.

The rest of the interface is IMO counter-intuitive on a number of fronts. I know I can hook Outlook into it once it's installed, but when I try to do so, I get a fatal exception caused by MAPISP32.EXE. I've already tried the repair option from the setup. Do I have to un-install then re-install in order to get this work? I've searched the April MSDN KB and don't find anything that applies.

Lastly, when I sent a test message to myself yesterday, it failed to use my new mail notification sound (I got a ding rather than Clint Eastwood saying, "Go ahead! Make my day."< g >) Further, it blew out everything except the volume control in the system tray (Task Scheduler, Matrox QuickDesk, Local SQL Server). I'm very tempted to go from Win98SE to Win2KPro, but the fact that almost all my users are in Win95B, causes me a great deal of hesitation. Any thoughts here?

End of rant.

Thanks troops,