ibm.com is an atrocity. I just cant explain how much rage i have right now. After spending 30 minutes trying to find fix pack 1 for domino 8.5 and finally finding the download link, the link turns out dead. How is it that there are people paid money to design and maintain this website? Do people at ibm just never ever look at their website? How is this possible?

I mean some people think cisco.com is bad, but atleast its easy to find the dead download links on cisco.com.

7/27/2009 2:25:23 PM

paging omarbadu

7/27/2009 2:26:37 PM

hp.com is bad too. just ftr

7/27/2009 2:38:28 PM

it's def up there. i have to go there for drivers sometimes and jesus it's a cluster fuck

7/27/2009 2:45:45 PM

i've been able to find and download things like printer drivers or system drivers without issue on hp.com. If you want to imagine how bad ibm.com is, imagine that if you searched hp.com for your printer model number it came back with 10 printers that aren't yours but contain the same characters in a different order.

So then you start over and go see if you can find a list of all printers hp has. You find the list but your printer (that you bought a month ago) is not there.

You then search google for your model printer and the first link is hp.com and the page contains your printer model. There is a link on this page that says click here to get drivers so you click it.

This link actually takes you to a page that gives you a list of all printer models hp makes, and suprisingly yours is on this list. You then click your printer and are presented with a page that has information about the various filenames for the driver installers for your printer for each os. At the top of this page it says click here to download these drivers as an eAssembly. You click this link.

It asks you to login with your hp.com account. You do so using an account you've had for the past 5 years.

It then gives you an error because you're missing information from your account profile. You sigh and click the link to fix your profile.

This takes you to a page asking you some questions about your profile. It asks you what has sparked your interest in their blade center offerings and if you are in charge of blade center purchasing for your company. You just pick the first two answeres to these pointless questions and then be sure to check the box labeled dont contact me, but also ignore the box labeled please contact me.

You hit submit and it takes you to a page that renders incorrectly because the server hosting the stylesheet is down.

You hit refresh and the gives you a generic message about invalid request.

You start from the beginning and get back to the login page. You login, and finally at long last are presented with a list of download links in some pointless flashy javascript that highlights things as you hover over them. You click the link to download the drivers for windows 2003 for your printer. You are then presented with a blank page with a huge ass url up top that contains some garbage session data and the filename. Nothing happens.

You then submit scathing feedback to their web site report tool and open a ticket with hp support to send you a working link.

Thats what it would be like if hp.com were ibm.com

7/27/2009 2:54:08 PM

So the response from lotus support is that they know its broken and to sign up here: https://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/iwm/web/signup.do?source=dfeedbk&lang=en_US&S_CMP=IBM so i'll get a notification when they fix it.

7/27/2009 3:32:42 PM

^^lol, jesus christ.

7/27/2009 3:44:42 PM

ok but did you ever get what you needed?

7/27/2009 3:54:13 PM

not yet. still waiting for them to fix it. I asked lotus support if they had a direct ftp link somewhere and they were like nope, gotta wait till we fix our stupid website

[Edited on July 27, 2009 at 4:21 PM. Reason : .]

7/27/2009 4:08:43 PM

I got one





















http://www.thewolfweb.com

7/27/2009 4:23:02 PM

my problem with hp.com was driver search also. i searched by model# and it wasn't listed. used the drop down list thingy and didn't see it. searched google, it found it, clicked that link, sorry page not found. over and over and over. wtf

i feel your pain

7/27/2009 5:01:37 PM

(Disclaimer #1: I work in Lotus Support for IBM).

The easiest method is to type "Lotus Domino Support" in Google. Go to the first link. Click on "Downloads". Click on "Recommended Maintenance".
--> http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=463&uid=swg27010592

This is true for any Lotus Product. If something is broken once you get to FixCentral or Passport Advantage, contact their respective support teams to figure out why it's broken (as you have done already). I'm fairly certain (though I can't confirm) management is aware behind the scenes this is broken. Notes / Domino isn't a small product and the number of notifications that go out for new fixpacks is large. External and internal probably aren't happy right now.

(Disclaimer #2: The design has gotten a LOT better over the past year, but it's still not 100% there. Trust me when I say they are working on it.).

[Edited on July 27, 2009 at 5:19 PM. Reason : gramma ninja protection]

7/27/2009 5:14:05 PM

^^^i came in here to post that.

7/27/2009 5:53:08 PM

Quote :

"paging omarbadu"

i quit ibm a month ago - even when i was working there i'd never pretend they had a great website - nobody that works there uses it - their internal site(s) are much better maintained

7/27/2009 6:26:13 PM

Quote :

"(Disclaimer #1: I work in Lotus Support for IBM). The easiest method is to type "Lotus Domino Support" in Google. Go to the first link. Click on "Downloads". Click on "Recommended Maintenance". --> http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=463&uid=swg27010592 This is true for any Lotus Product. If something is broken once you get to FixCentral or Passport Advantage, contact their respective support teams to figure out why it's broken (as you have done already). I'm fairly certain (though I can't confirm) management is aware behind the scenes this is broken. Notes / Domino isn't a small product and the number of notifications that go out for new fixpacks is large. External and internal probably aren't happy right now. (Disclaimer #2: The design has gotten a LOT better over the past year, but it's still not 100% there. Trust me when I say they are working on it.). [Edited on July 27, 2009 at 5:19 PM. Reason : gramma ninja protection]"

Im aware its better than it used to be. I started using domino around version 6. To be honest since 7 came out the server has just been so much better than it used to be which has meant I almost never go to lotus.com/support like I used to. Most of my visits to ibm.com these days are to passport advantage (also leeps and bounds better than it was). But still, neither lotus.com/support or passport advantage are as good as they should be. For example no matter what language or OS you pick in passport advantage it still gives you results for every os and every language. Its really stupid. And the fact that its this goddamned hard just to download a simple patch is just mind boggling. I mean for what possible reason is it this complex? Why dont they just toss the executables into a directory on their webservers and be done with it? Why do they need an overly complex security mechanism that they change every other day?

What they should do is redesign their system so that given a part number(ex CZ344EN) you can supply it to a webservice to return the download link. Then you provide a software index with a search that works + filtering. Then I login to passport advantage, click domino -> 8.5 -> windows 2003 -> english. This gives me a list of all domino 8.5 related packages for windows 2003 english in 32/64bit. From here I can further filter by install package/upgrade package/fix packs plus an option to show related products (db2, websphere, traveler, etc...). Its not a hard concept. Im sure you guys already have product name, version, os, etc... for each part number its just a matter of doing a better job of indexing it.

7/27/2009 10:17:50 PM

l33ps and b0unds

7/28/2009 7:24:18 AM

Quote :

"Its not a hard concept"

Other software brands within IBM (WebSphere Application Server comes to mind) actually do exactly what you are describing, drop the files in an FTP server, then use some fancy CSS/Javascript as a front-end to help guide end-users to "which" patch for which OS they need.

Agreed, and as mentioned previously, they are working on it ;-). Can't disclose too much more on a public message board, but they have taken feedback (both internal and external) to get this stuff more usable.

7/28/2009 11:29:26 AM

yet more reasons that notes sucks

7/29/2009 12:59:05 PM

http://www.espn.com

8/4/2009 8:04:03 PM