When manually invoking a backup in System Recovery 2013 using the Run or Manage Backups window, you get the progress and performance window, which is good. However this window has been configured to be modal, hence you only have two options - hide, or cancel operation. Until one of these options has been clicked, the rest of the application is unusable. This means that a lot of screen real-estate is taken up and there is no option to select / move the other windows. 

If you close all of these windows, the go to the system tray and open the progress and performance window, then you just get the status window, which is helpful.

Why can't the first progress and performance window be the same as the one in the system tray - that way you could just move the status window out the way and close the rest of the System Recovery application - continue with your work and still see whats going on.

As it is at the moment, the only thing that the application succeeds in doing is causing a lot of extra mouse clicks.

BTW its been like this since version 8.5, so a fix would be really welcome.

As the use-case, you manually invoke backups when taking off-site manual backups to an external disk that goes into a fire safe, so knowing when its finished is helpful. You could also consider having some notify options (popup in system tray, e-mail, etc) that allows a user to know when the app has finished doing a backup cycle.