It seems at an early age, both in my life and with Windows, I have spent many hours staring at a spinning hourglass, which is now spinning circles. Apple at least added the coffee cup so that you would realize this is going to take a while. I joined the computing age when modems speeds were 1200 baud, which shortly became 2400 baud. Although it seemed to double at what seemed to be almost monthly for some time, it reached the 4800 then 9600 point and was there for some time. I remember when the 14,400 baud modem came out as it was a big jump in communication speeds, probably because that was when Compuserve was pretty big. Finally it reached the 28,800 speeds just as the internet was becoming a public figure. I was still using Compuserve but it had the 'internet' via CB chat, which was nothing more than an IRC chat room before such programs like ICQ came along. But this entire time, when it came to file transfer, or installing a new program, it seemed like I spent so much time staring at the infamous spinning hourglass. Today that has changed to a spinner circle and there is one thing with windows that has NEVER changed. That is, the amount of time left for the transfer to complete. Windows has never been very accurate with this and it really bugs me. It simply estimates the time based on the file it is currently working on whereas Apple has never had issues like this. Oh sure, with Apple it will say an approximate time, but when it gets to 'less than a minute--less than 30 seconds- less than 5 seconds' it is quite accurate. Windows may say 10 seconds remaining with a count down to zero and you still wait.... 
So even though the modem speeds reached 28.8 and even 44.1 if you were so inclined to spend the money (shortly after this hi-speed internet was introduced through broadband cable and telephone ADSL) you would still find yourself staring at the spinning hourglass, which became a bar graph and now the spinning circle.. If I only knew then, what I know now, that my life would be filled with spending time staring at spinning hourglasses and circles. If you ever see a message like this one, you may want to find a new line of work!
