[nfbcs] With silent disk, how do you know?

[Tracy Carcione]

With the new silent disks, how do you know your computer is doing
something, when Jaws goes silent?  For instance, I have trouble making
sure my new laptop is on.  I can feel a tiny draft from the fan, but it's
very subtle.
Or, just now, my old work desktop decided to do an automatic update, and
Jaws stopped talking.  The only way I knew the PC was still working was
that I could hear the disk spinning, and, when it rebooted after the
update, spinning for another few minutes before Jaws finally came up.
So, with the new silent discs, how do you know something is happening and
you should just wait a bit?
Tracy