Pete,
Good ideas for reflecting my thoughts.
In my current application I've just got 3 different kinds of alerts defined: frame relay slow (> 200 msec for 5/7 samples), Internet slow (>300 msec, 7/10 samples), fast backbone connection (>100 msec., 3/5 sample). So just having a single letter for each would be enough combined with a color code. Color code could be like OK (green), alert condition met but not enough samples (yellow), alert condition met for sufficient samples (red). Revert to yellow when transitioning back to normal.

I like not taking up too many characters for indicating the alert state. Not sure I'd want to give up too much real estate as I'm always showing all possible columns. I find each one gives me good information.

Thanks for listening.