Sounds really annoying. That’s why i’ve never installed Growl.

As for buddy list, the iChat menulet is great for that. And there’s a menulet for power management too. YMMV.

Growl is the greatest. The reason it isn't annoying is that you can totally customize if you are bothered, and how, and how often, and by which apps.

What's really annoying are utilities that alert you with modal dialog boxes that interrupt and make you click OK. With Growl, messages fade out on their own without user intervention...if you want. It's your call.

One of the apps that helps me out through Growl is Unplugged, which puts up a message when my power adapter is knocked out of an outlet, in case I'm not paying attention to the battery icon.

I use Growl's network capability to notify me of events I'm interested in that are happening on my Macs elsewhere in the house.

I am doing a programming course, so I'm currently booted in XP for most of the time.

So my first reaction to Growl is "for ******, enjoy your helpful-messages-free system". The number one pain in XP is all those helpful messages distracting me all the time.

Very uninformed opinion, btw, don't know growl at all.

I have been using growl almost since the beginning. At first I thought, "man this is going to be annoying sucking up my cpu every time I get a new mail message to show this pretty faded window with the information" but then I realized how much time it really saves me because I can be working on something else and if all I hear is the "new mail" sound, I have to stop doing whatever it is that I'm concentrating on to see if it's something that needs my immediate attention. Now I can quickly glance at a preview that shows up on my screen for a mere few seconds and find out if it needs my immediate attention. And best of all, you can choose a theme that is see-through so it won't bother you even if you're reading something behind where the alert shows up.