is it really important to write a review about a software? i swear ...i asked myself this question about 100 times.....

Let say that the génius buddy we have, called Mr Biotech write a review about Mac, or me writing one about PS, or anyone......the creators will they look at it to see what could be said or reviewed on their creation? if it's done, will they change anything?

it's quite known that anyone of us tried to figure out how that thing or soft work, or (in his opignion : this SHOULD work) ...then take a large time to write a review and illustrate it for better comprehension .....But is it really important?

My $0.02;

Nope, reviews (on the levels of publicity that anything I would publish would recieve) don't matter to the product. However, they *do* indicate to other, like-minded people what software might be good for them, what they might like to take for a whirl. In effect, all we are doing is passing around our experiences with certain software - which saves other people time in doing it themselves, and may introduce them to the Next Big Program they will use foreverandever.

This matters.

Usually the point of reviews is to influence the consumer, not the producer.

However, a review we did on the old site and on the SYSPodcast had some effect on the producer in one scenario.  We reviewed RocketDock, which is a freeware dock program akin to the OS X dock.  The reviewer (not me) brought up quite a list of things they'd like changed and the developers responded with "That's a great idea!  It's going into the next beta!"

Of course, Punk!Software (which makes RocketDock) is a smaller outfit that can quickly take input and implement it.  Larger corps like Microsoft will of course take much longer to make course-adjustments to the leviathan barge that is their company than small groups that actually listen to their constituency.

Check our RocketDock and Punk!Software's other cool toys here.

so, in deep, this should make the software progressing......at least that's a good things on it

Hopefully   Punk!Software's a great group of guys.  They listen with eagerness to people who comment on their software.

Most of the time, though, a review sways user opinion to the point where a company does something about it.  Take Apple and the "scratchable" iPods, for instance.  Less than 1000 complaints were actually made, but the publicity they got because of people on Engadget.com, cNet.com, and digg.com generated enough awareness that they felt obligated to address the issue.

I like reading reviews still   Sometimes it's how I learn about a lot of stuff before actually trying it out, whether it's software, gadgetry, or dish soap.

Talking of docks, I'm actually trying to find a dock for Linux - the old-school window-list taskbar is something I feel is a bit anachronistic, since I never actually read the text anyway (i just look at the icons.)

I've tried three things, Karamba/Super-Karamba (in KDE), the Gnome toys, and then either Enlightenment or Serenade shell (I can't remember, but think it was Enlightenment).

The gnome one sucked badly... didn't work intuitively in adding icons to it, and the animations were really slow on my system.  I don't think it was leveraging the graphics card at all.

SuperKaramba's dock worked much more smoothly but it's a hoss on the memory.

The enlightenment shell was based around a dock, and it worked great!  It also had its own desktop widget engine that supported full alpha-transparency.  I stopped using it, though because it lacked the ability to store documents and files on the desktop (at the time I tried it).

enlightenment is a TANK of a shell, but I never got around to playing with it - i started getting annoyed by the instrunctional popups you get if you leave your mouse still for about two seconds :p

The default theme for E (winter) struck me as the most perfect excution of a white gradient theme I have ever seen.

wrt original post topic : Through the SYS podcast link-list, I just found Krita, which seems to be the answer to the GIMP/GimpShop's awkwardness. Yes folks, Krita *actually has* tools for such earth-shattering tasks as drawing rounded rectangles!! (without having to use a script, or use Gimp's mawkish interface to draw two rectangles and four circles....)

Never got the time to use Gimp, i read about 10 reviews about it, but never used it, seems to be a perfect freeware so???!!!

Re: OS X-like dock for Linux:

This just popped up on the wire:

http://code.google.com/p/avant-window-navigator/

Looks like Google's spanked up its own dock for Linux!  Possibly another step towards a linux-based GoogleOS?  Looks nice! 

CORRECTION: njpatel, the developer of avant-window-navigator, is not actually affiliated with Google, and thus avant-window-navigator is not a Google product, although it's hosted using their tools.

"Awn needs a composited environment to run in, therefore you should be running either AIGLX or XGL with a compositor (such as Compiz or Beryl). It also depends on libwnck (libwnck-devel), and you will need all the usual development packages on your computer to install it."

awww, that means I have to go install proper video drivers. I demand my own personal army of Linux-trained african chimpanzees to do this 'work' thing for me :p

Hehe!