I recently set up some git repositories using a Bonobo git server. I use tortoise git and Git Source Control Provider extension for Visual Studio 2013. Whenever anyone commits and pushes code to the repository, no one else can view the changes until they do a fetch/pull. Before I was using svn and the status icons on all of my files and folders would tell me if my code was out of date by displaying a red cross on the icon.
So I am wondering if it is an issue with my repository or my git client.
I am running git version 1.9.4 on Windows 7 and Bonobo Git Server (3.4.2.0)
It's something your client could fix by internally checking with the upstream repository's branch heads (which you can do yourself with git ls-remote -h origin), apparently whatever you were using with svn was incessantly pinging the server for status that way.
But if there's changes, you're going to fetch them, so what's wrong with fetching when you want an uptodate status? Fetch doesn't touch the worktree, you don't have to merge right then. Maybe there's a config option for this in Tortoise?