[ktpsns]

Progress bars are way better then spinners: They communicate an time/duration estimate, at least. Even in the case it is bad, this is always better then just showing a spinner, indicating that some system is doing something. Spinners got omnipresent since the Web 2.0. Nowadays for me they are almost always a sign of lazy programmers with an "that's good enough" paradigm.

[canadian_tired]

Progress bars that lie are seldom better than spinners. I suppose what is needed is an informed spinner. It would have to be visually different than a bog-standard spinner. I have seen many cases where the numbers on the bar were entirely made up...but they seem to keep people happy. The illusion of progress maybe?

[theamk]

sure, but even the wrong numbers can be useful because they provide some information.

like the "75% max" example from the post. Does it lie? yes. Can it be useful? very much, it is pretty easy to compensate.

[azhenley]

I agree that spinners really aren't useful (for anything that takes more than 5-10 seconds). Solution #2 from the post is what I want!