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

I've read somewhere that if the process seems to be speeding up, it seems to be faster than when it's progressing at a steady pace. I can't find the reference right now, but it should be simple to implement.

(10 minutes later...)

A further look down Google lane unearthed the following references:

http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/hacking-memory/ http://blogs.msdn.com/time/