Does it really? I think it doesn't. IMHO, it shouldn't, anyway.
Anyway, I can think of a few more valid reasons why you wouldn't power down
a system, such as inserting a boot floppy, or reconfiguring the BIOS.
If the system's in another room, a halt is better than either <reboot and
mad dash across the office> or <powerdown and powerup>. I dislike to do the
latter because it saves the hard disks wear and tear; average lifetime goes
way down with every spindown/spinup cycle, as any owner of old Quantum
disks (the ones with the stiction problem) will unhappily attest. :-/
> I've also had faulty hardware which doesn't like being power-down EVER.
Yep. Such as "yes I know the CMOS battery is shot since sometime last year.
Should I care?". Living in a place where there hasn't been an external
power failure for about two years now, I'm somewhat reluctant to take down
the system for half an hour just to find out what size the battery _should_
have, and another hour to remove the mainboard and solder the new battery
in if the mainboard maker was greedy.
--
When they want it bad (in a rush), they get it bad.
-- John K. Meskimen
--
Matthias Urlichs \ noris network GmbH / Xlink-POP Nürnberg
Schleiermacherstraße 12 \ Linux+Internet / EMail: urlichs@noris.de
90491 Nürnberg (Germany) \ Consulting+Programming+Networking+etc'ing
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Click <A HREF="http://info.noris.de/~smurf/finger">here</A>. 42