I'll take a peck at the "update" thing, if I may, as it is at least topical for OS design.
iansjack wrote:
The computer will switch itself off when it has installed the updates, so what's the problem?
[...]
So, put the laptop to sleep rather than shutting it down. That's the way a lot of people work.
Let's say I have a hard drive encryption system running. When I boot up, before the OS is even loaded, the encryption software asks my password to unlock the encryption. Without that password, no OS is loaded, no HDD data is retrievable.
If I put the laptop to sleep, will the HDD decryption token expire, or did I just weaken my system security?
At least at my company (where we're handling personal customer data on a regular basis), you are to shut down the laptop before leaving it out of your sight, to avoid exactly the above szenario. That means you have to sit there and wait until the system actually powers down. (It doesn't really matter how Windows / the encryption software handle things, that's the ruling done by the ISO and you have to stick by it.)
And anyways, "shutdown might take a while, so put it to sleep" -- I need to be
aware of the
potential delay involved in shutting down, and chose something I don't actually
want in order to avoid the problem. (I
want to power the thing down without unnecessary delay.)
That's called a "workaround". It doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist, just that you can alleviate it.