[tomc1985]

I designed and maintain a report-generating component and my system does the same thing. (Plus it is helpful as users can tell me where in the process it failed/hung) It doesn't matter how long each message sits on the screen, as long as it changes every so often. Animated, infinite progress bars also help if you don't/can't estimate ETA

[Retra]

A cycling animation only tells you that your computer/UI isn't dead, it doesn't tell you that the underlying task isn't frozen.

[dingo_bat]

In the loading animation of windows 98 there was a horizontal bar of moving colors. And if it stopped animating, you can be 100% sure that the computer is frozen. I wonder if we can do similar with cycling animations.