How can I improve the subjective speed of my application?

Question

Today my co-worker noticed that when adding a decimal place to a progress indicator leads to the impression that the program is running faster than without. (i.e. instead of 1,2

Answer 1

Present some intermediate, interesting results first. "We've found 2,359 zetuyls matching your request, we're just calculating their future value".

I've seen transport reservation systems do that sort of thing quite nicely.