Someone who is working on his Masters in programming told me an interesting story about estimated times. He said that programmers build in a time to report, regardless of accuracy, so that the enduser will think that something is happening, and not bail out.
If you have ever downloaded something (the current utility OnyX comes to mind) that does
not have a meaningful progress bar (either a time countdown or a megabyte countup) you will appreciate even "meaningless" time remaining indicators. I get left with a feeling of being in limbo when there is no indicator.
