The funky progress bar is about the coolest thing with npm. They could let it take a minute if they wanted too and i would keep watching it with amazement.
you mean the progress bar that takes up way too much screen real estate to the extent that it completely cuts off any useful information from the install process?
Yes, that one. I agree with you, by the way. I don't have a terminal in front of me, but the progress bar seems to leave something like 10 characters of less of rapidly-changing status updates in exchange for the vast majority of horizontal real estate. I bet if they had split the bar onto a separate line from the status, it would run faster