Instant Messaging Software : IBM Sametime vs. IBM NotesBuddy

At the age of outsourcing and telecommuting instant message software is an important part of any business and organization. IBM is one of the pioneer companies who provide instant messaging software for corporate world. IBM Sametime is one of the best available instant messaging software. The older version of Sametime (version 6.0) software was having few drawbacks and recently IBM came with the latest version of 7.5. IBM is also having yet instant messaging software called Notesbuddy. Few organization is using Notesbuddy which is freeware offered by IBM. Sametime 7.5 is not free. There are few things common between Sametime 7.5 and Notesbuddy. Few things of Notesbuddy are good and few things of Sametime 7.5 are good. Let's take a closure look at these two products of IBM in order to compare them side by side. We will discuss this in two ways - one is usability concerns and another is cosmetic things.

Usability Concerns

IBM Sametime Versus IBM NotesBuddy # 1: Chats History - One of the interesting facts of Notesbuddy is its chat history. It keeps all chat histories of any chat takes place between different users. Chat history will be saved in a single window of chat. Whenever you open it you will able to see the all previous chat history as long as you don't save that transcription. It makes life cool to find out the specific information you exchange during your last chat. Each day it will start the chat in same window with a new log date.

Sametime 7.5 went one step ahead with this feature. In Sametime 7.5 the chat history will be saved in a same window for each day. When you come to next day and open your chat with same person you chat yesterday, you won't be able to see the last day's chat. But all chat histories by date are saved in your local disk under the menu called 'Chat History'. If you open the chat history you will able to see all chats per person per day. You don't need to save any chat transcript any more. All chat transcripts will be saved automatically. This is a great help to retrieve all your old chat transcripts. This is more organized representation of chat history.

IBM Sametime Versus IBM NotesBuddy # 2: Buddy List - Buddy list of Notesbuddy is good and an improved version on Sametime 6.0 is. Notesbuddy buddy list very useful and it shows the status of online people and their messages.

IBM tried to bring few more improvements on buddy list in Sametime 7.5. If you add any group list it will show the total number of members and number of members currently online just beside the group name. This is very useful to understand the strength of any group. It will also allow you to choose the option to display the offline persons under the group or not.

IBM Sametime Versus IBM NotesBuddy # 3: Chat Window - The main problem with Sametime 6.0 was that if you close the chat window you will lost all previous chat you had. Notesbuddy fixed that problem and shows the previous chat transcripts until and unless you shut down your system without saving the chat transcripts.

Sametime 7.5 shows the previous chat messages for a day long. The previous chat messages will show as inactive if you close and reopen the chat window. This is very useful to understand the current messages and also to find anything from the old messages.

IBM Sametime Versus IBM NotesBuddy # 4: Speech Reorganization System - Notesbuddy has very interesting feature of speech reorganization. If there are any new messages from any one it will start reading the message for you. This is very helpful if you work simultaneously in two different systems. The voice notification will help to pay the attention on the new instant message you received.

IBM Sametime Versus IBM NotesBuddy # 5: Voice and Video Chat - Notesbuddy doesn't support voice or video chat. Sametime 6.0 also doesn't support voice and video chat.

Sametime 7.5 is a very good solution in this respect. Sametime 7.5 is enabled with voice and video chat which is very useful in corporate world situation.

IBM Sametime Versus IBM NotesBuddy # 6: E-mail Conversion - Notesbuddy is totally integrated with Lotus Notes e-mail server. Any chat can converted into e-mail and you can send mail the chat transcript to anyone using this mail feature. I found this feature is very useful.

In Sametime 7.5 I miss this e-mail feature a lot. Sametime 7.5 is also having an e-mail option, but that uses Microsoft Outlook e-mail client to send your mail.

Cosmetic Concerns

IBM Sametime Versus IBM NotesBuddy # 7: Chat Window Theme - Notesbuddy has several different themes to apply and all very good & interesting to watch. Sametime 7.5 doesn't have any theme concept as such, look & feel of Sametime 7.5 is much better than its old version. I would say Sametime 7.5 is decent enough.