Basically, the local policy gives you the option to hide all shut down options except for Switch User, Log Off and Lock. These are far less options than the usual ones available in Vista and I feel it’s quite sufficient for a ‘normal’ user. If they wish to shut down, they can log off and then shut down from the login screen. This policy can be changed for Administrators and Non-Administrators so it’s quite handy.

To be honest, this debate on shut down options on a Vista PC could go on for ages, and there’s no real definitive answer, but it’s interesting to hear how something so simple as turning off a PC can become so complicated when given too many options.

You make a compelling case for why IT administrators have a unique and valuable set of goals, and that they benefit from a different behavior than “normal users.”

It seems like it would help to hide those administrator-options from a novice user, while making them available to an experienced admin. Something along the lines of being able to right click on an executable and select “Run as…” to take advantage of admin permissions temporarily. I’m not sure what that right answer is, but I suspect it could be easily configured or defaulted (to show / hide) some of the options.

Switching user does allow us to log in as a different user, but without being able to log off, the computer’s resources are still being used on that log in, plus whatever other users are logged in as well.

Yes, we could just power off and restart and log in as an administrator, but that takes too long. Windows Vista has incredibly quick log off and switch user speeds. Users do not want to be waiting minutes to use their pc’s while the system power’s off and on again. It is far quicker and more convenient to log off, or switch to an administrator log on and then log that administrator login off.

Really is an interesting issue, and one that causes us to think about how important the “unimportant” things really are.

First, no, he didn’t say a “log-off” would imply a “power-off”.

Second, and more importantly, his point is “to log off” is not the goal of the USER, it is the translation of the goal (I’m done for now. Goodbye.) into technospeak and artificial distinctions.

Yes, there are multiple different power states between “off” and “on”. Should a user be deciding which state to go into? Why? *I* don’t care about any of those power states. I, honestly, can trust a well-crafted algorithm to figure out that the longer I’ve been away from the computer the further down that slope of power states it can go, eventually hitting 100% fully “off” at some point.

He misses a few uses here: first of course being that you, the user, often know more than the computer does about when the computer will be needed again, so you know better than it if hibernate makes more sense than sleep right now. Still, I think he’s a lot closer to being right than any solution which exposes the myriad of hardware power states to the user for direct (and, quite frankly, ignorant) control.

What’d be *better* would be some way to indicate, “I’m going to be gone for three hours. See you then.” or “I want you to be up and running at 6:00 AM sharp!” Because that’s what the computer needs to know in order to make the right decision about how far asleep it should go. The UI on that, though … good luck!

Someone might say “for ease of use, it sure would be nice if I could shut down the system by doing X”. You can explain that he can do Y instead, but X might actually make sense.

And no, your uncle does NOT, I repeat NOT, have to “decide between 15 ways to shut down the system”. Explain one or two of them. Or if he discovers one way on his own, that’s fine; let him use that.

I don’t have to choose between 500 programming languages when I write software; I don’t know how to code in 495 of them. And I don’t plan to learn.

Don’t claim something is complex when it might not be.

Are you suggesting that it is a bad idea to look at the overall cost of having 15 ways to shut down versus the benefits of those 15 ways?

Or are you suggesting that this analysis was done, and the decision was still to have 15 ways? I did not get that impression from Moishe’s article.

Joel’s solution is to collapse log off and power off together? In other words, if you wanted to log off, you’d re-start the machine? Are you kidding me?

Vista’s solution makes complete sense: One key access to a state that 99% of the folks are looking for, and an extra mouse click if you want an advanced that that requires a bit of intelligence to understand. This is how all consumer products are designed. My wife has never been below the top level menus on Tivo. I have. She will never venture beyond the top level power button choice on Vista. I will.

PS. If you only knew how persona-driven MSFT was, you’d realize how simplistic your argument above was.

Microsoft needs Windows Vista to be a success, and it will only be that if seen by users as being a worthwhile step forward. But it needs to fight its way back out of the feature ticklist trap if it wants to ensure user adoption. I hope that there ar…..