Some of you may be interested in seeing that there have been a few changes
made to the Image Analysis Tools Registry at MGH.
    http://www.cma.mgh.harvard.edu/iatr/

In particular, it now gives you a chance to include feedback about your
experience of using the tools. If you choose to comment on SPM5, then here
are some rough guidelines about filling in the review form at
http://www.cma.mgh.harvard.edu/iatr/tool_review.php

* INSTALLATION
I would suggest scoring a (5) for "Installation" - unless:
1) You are a Matlab novice and haven't figured out the editpath or path
commands.
2) You use Windows and don't have access to the gunzip for unpacking the
tarred gzipped files. This means that you may need to use some other package
to unpack the distribution. If doing this on a Windows platform, then the
software you use for unpacking may try to be clever and insert additional
control characters. If you use WinZip, then you should ensure that TAR file
smart CR/LF conversion is disabled (under the Miscellaneous Configuration
Options). You should also make sure that it unpacks in a way that keeps the
proper directory structure.
3) You use a platform for which we don't have any compiled binaries (mex
files). This means that you may need to compile the mex files yourself,
using the Makefile in the "src" directory, and move them to the main spm5
directory. The reason we may not have pre-compiled mex files for your
platform is that we may not have access to such a machine on which to compile
them. Also, we can't test the Makefile for other platforms, so don't
necessarily know if it will work.
4) You are fed up with downloading the updates. It's true that a few of the
functions have needed a bit of extra work since the SPM5 release, but much of
it was done a bit last minute. Significant updates are announced on the
mailing list each time they are made available.
5) You don't have data in the right format for your images. There are a few
converters out there that will sort this out for you though.
6) You only have a version of MATLAB older than 6.5 - in which case SPM5 won't
work.

* FUNCTIONALITY
How you score the "Functionality" part is up to you, and depends on what you
want it to do with the software. SPM5 has been written in MATLAB, which
(with a bit of practice) is pretty powerful and should allow you to do many
other things with your data that you can't do via the SPM user interface.
For guidance, you can check out
http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/techdoc/learn_matlab/ch1intro.html
. SPM5 contains a number of MATLAB functions that can be used as a guide for
reading and writing image data. Also, the examples named spm_config_*.m may
be useful (more documentation by typing 'help spm_config'). You can take
ideas from these and put them in your own spm_config_*.m files in the
spm5/toolbox directory in order to generate an SPM5 user interface for your
own utilities.

* DOCUMENTATION
As for the "Documentation" section, we have loads of it for SPM5. The
spm5/man/manual.pdf file is currently 255 pages long. It may be a little
repetitive in parts, but there is definately a lot of it. I think it
deserves a (5) just for the volume of documentation you get. Many of the
options in SPM5 are also explained in the user interface (some of these
explanations may be similar to those in the manual).

You can also access the very extensive FAQ at
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/spm.html . These have not been put into any
order yet, but it is possible to search them if you can figure out a suitable
set of keywords. Note also that this list is "frequently asked questions",
rather than "frequently answered questions" . Many of the questions may not
have any answers, but at least you can feel that you are not alone with your
particular question. Anyone wishing to provide missing answers is very
welcome to do so. Note also that some of the questions refer to older
versions of the software, so the answers may no longer still apply. In
particular, there is a handful of people still clinging on to SPM99. This
software is now seven years old, so questions relating to SPM99 are of little
or no relevance to SPM5.

Best regards,
-John