+1, other than ESPN (Which is EPSN issue, not Galaxy - it's just a poorly written app for Android - they probably just grabbed whatever intern was sitting at the desk that day and had him port it) I have no issues with notifications on the G2S. Coming from different platforms I guess people have different expectations, which is cool.
You can try NoLED, which will put all kinds of notifications on the home/lock screen for you... or one of the many camera flash notification applets, or something like GoLauncher or Bubble Notifications, etc...