Re: Power Button Question

Bill wrote:
> In article <CdKdnRTUtoG7ObTVnZ2dnUVZ_rCtnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>  Dudley Henriques <dhenriques@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 
>> Bill wrote:
>>> In article <ZLmdnT7pMPTRBrTVnZ2dnUVZ_tLinZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>>>  Dudley Henriques <dhenriques@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On the Macbook Pro using Leopard;
>>>>
>>>> I'll be letting my wife use the computer for some work and I'm a bit 
>>>> nervous about the power button. If for some reason she forgets to
shut 
>>>> down normally and pushes the power button with the system up and 
>>>> running, what exactly happens at that point? I've never done it on a 
>>>> Mac. Does it execute a hard shutdown or throw you an option window?
>>>> Thanks
>>> Normally gives you a dialog box where you can select cancel, sleep, 
>>> shutdown. If you select shutdown, it will do a normal shutdown.
>>>
>>> If you push and hold the power button, it will after a few seconds do
a 
>>> forced immediate shutdown.
>>>
>> Thank you for your time.
>>
>> On that forced shutdown; is that a "hard shutdown" as might be the case

>> with a PC (in other words not good for anything open) or does it simply

>> force a normal shutdown duplicating the apple/shutdown normal
procedure?
>> What I'm trying to understand is whether there is danger in someone 
>> accidentally hitting the power button to shut down (like my wife for 
>> example:-)
> 
> The "forced shutdown" from holding down the power button protects the 
> hard drive from damage, but does nothing about saving any open 
> do***ents. So it is better than pulling the power cord. The machine 
> should start up normally after a forced shutdown of this type.
> 
> Normal shutdown asks if you want to save changes in do***ents if it 
> finds any open with unsaved changes.
> 
> You have to hold the power button down for a fairly long time -- several

> seconds -- before the forced shutdown will occur, so there is really not

> much danger of causing it inadvertently.
> 
> The reason the forced shutdown feature exists is to allow a safe 
> recovery -- safe in the sense of avoiding hard drive damage -- from the 
> machine totally freezing up and not responding at all to any commands. 
> This can occur from what is called "kernel panic" where the operating 
> system loses track of what it is doing. This is quite rare but can 
> happen.
> 
> Occasionally an individual application may freeze. It may be necessary 
> to force quit the application. This can be done without forcing a system

> shutdown, either by selecting "Force Quit" from the Apple menu, or 
> pressing the key combination Option-Command-Escape. "Command" is the 
> Apple-Pretzel key. When you force quit an application, unsaved changes 
> of any open do***ents in that application will be lost, but otherwise 
> the system will be just fine.
> 
Thank you very much.

-- 
Dudley Henriques