IMHO, I'm much more likely to hit CTRL-ALT-DEL on a flashing animation than on a thermometer that actually tell me that something is progressing.

What about a combination of an ActiveX control and a thermometer (like the copy file in Explorer)?

>Again, simply because of aesthetics. It isn't animated (which is, IMHO, the best way to represented progress), and it only *implies* how much is left to be done. This is, I think, perfectly acceptable for developers and other techies, because we're accustomed to thinking in such terms, but it's unnecessarily demanding of the average user.