[alphard]

> It also means I never get a "process is running" prompt like in IntelliJ or Emacs when I want to exit.

No, instead you find that you can't :q - or type anything for that matter - because everything's frozen while vim is realising that the network drive is down, or you're waiting for the syntax highlighting to finish.

[oinksoft]

And then you hit control-C and resume editing. None of this is as dramatic as you describe, and syntax-highlight freezes aren't as common now with the improved highlighting algorithm in 7.4.