These stupid things piss me off.
There's absolutely no point whatsoever. I have yet to see a single progress bar smoothly move from one side to the other. Therefore, there's never any way of knowing how much progress has actually been made. If the bar jumps to the 3/4 mark, one would think that 3/4 of the process has been completed. But then the bar remains motionless for six minutes before inching along like a blind caterpillar (apologies to any that may be reading this).