Status bar
Almost every program I use daily has a status bar - some I look at more than others. I am part of the throng that watches it when hovering over links in IE, which makes me curse __DoPostBack...
From Paul Vick's blog:
But what this really makes me think of is a usability test they did on Access one day to see how effective text placed in the status bar was. The test went like this: the user was given some task to do in Access. Unbeknownst to them, we'd stuck a message in the status bar that read “If you notice this message and tell the usability lead, we will give you $15.” Want to guess how many people got the $15? Zero. After that, we were careful not to put any important information down in the status bar, because it was 100% likely that no one would ever see it.