heheh - i love your avatar veign
so far we have not asked for any review licenses; there were only a handful of cases where the shareware versions were limited in functionality and where we did not already own a copy of the software. our general approach has been to view such limitations in the shareware versions of programs (as opposed to the standard
time limits) as a bad thing that deserved criticisim.
we did ask acdsee for a review copy of acdsee8 prior to our review, but they were too disorganized to provide one to use in time, and they didn't want us saying anything about it anyway, for reasons that might drive a competent pr person insane.
however, it seems likely that we are going to run into cases in the future where getting review copies that remove functionality limits would be essential to doing a certain review, and your advice is very welcome - now that we have some serious reviews under our belts i gather that such things may be easier to get (and easier to insist on if they want to be included in the review), and we do try to make sure we thank and acknowledge any such gifts from companies.
as i've remarked before, my impression is that you can really divide companies into 2 categories.
there are those that don't respond to emails in a timely fashion, if at all, don't care to talk about their software, don't care about our site or reviews really, aren't interested in discounts, donating copies, etc. and just have some flunkies handling customer service.
and then there are the companies which have real people you can interact with. they care about their program, they want to make it better, they care about your opinion, the review, etc. they are interested in our web site, they like to talk, they are amenable to offering discounts for our members or doing something in the way of working with our members, etc.
it's hard not to really want to support those in the second category, even when their program isn't (yet) as good as the best program from a company in the first category.
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