I would like to counterpoint.  I knew quite a few people I trusted who sang the praises of Lotus Notes.<p>It was the IBM buyout that started the big downfall.<p>&gt; all the insane GUIs built using the tools?<p>Remember VB6 and all the shitty applications written in that?  Uh, yeah.  And don&#x27;t get me started on the disasters that people perpetrated on us from the web.  And how about the pile of dogshit that was Gtk v1?  &lt;shudder&gt;<p>In addition, this was also still the time of &quot;look and feel&quot; lawsuits.<p><i>Everybody</i> had insane GUI&#x27;s in the 1990&#x27;s, so singling out Lotus Notes is far from fair.