How would you like to reduce your electricity consumption, decrease the level of CO2 and save money all at the same time? Well, I know you would certainly like to do those things, but, you may ask, how can a shutdown program do that? If you stop and think this through, you may actually come to the conclusion that it is plausible. At least in theory.

If your computer is running even though you're not working or playing or doing anything with it, that will simply cost you money because the electricity bill increases. And guess what? The PC also emits carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and that is more practically and often translated into an increase of the room temperature. "But I have coolers, fans and other heat-reducing thingies", some may say. Actually, few home users think seriously and invest in that aspect of PC management.

You can avoid all that in a very easy way: shutdown or put your computer on standby when it doesn't have to be running. Yes, you can do that manually but isn't it easier to have someone or rather something do that for you? This is where Auto Shutdown Manager comes in.

It is a professional Power Management utility with loads of features, that is both easy to install and to use. It manages shutdown and restart procedures as well as Standby, Hibernate or Log off user procedures, responds and adapts to the network activity or to any running application. To make a long story short, you can set up any software or hardware resource to prevent an unwanted shutdown so that the error percentage of Auto Shutdown Manager is kept to nil.

Once you install and run the application for the first time, you will come face to face with the timer that you can activate and use to set a specific shutdown time. Auto Shutdown Manager conveniently runs minimized in the system tray, so that it will not clutter the display. It can also be set to run at startup so you don't have to open it later on. However, when you bring up the main window of Auto Shutdown Manager, it will sit on top of the other applications much like the Task Manager. It shouldn't bother you if you minimize the application right after you're done working with it.

Now, if you've set the timer, it's time to start customizing the network and application activities that will keep your PC on, no matter what. Or, you can do the opposite and specify the events that will bring the computer to standby, hibernation or even shut it down. This is done quite easily in the corresponding tabs of Auto Shutdown Manager.

A very nice feature of Auto Shutdown Manager is that in the green bottom area of the main window it will show you the money, energy and carbon dioxide you save after a shutdown, hibernation or stand by period. Moreover, in the Protocol tab of Auto Shutdown Manager you can see how long your system has been on, the average power consumption and the estimated cost.

Auto Shutdown Manager can protect your wallet by saving energy and in turn you can protect the application by restricting the access to specific users, which will have to come up with the magic words you select to unlock Auto Shutdown Manager. This way you can prevent children from tampering with this management tool or accidental misuse from unwary users (especially if you are a system administrator).

Once you've passed through all the tabs and configured all the settings you want, you'll realize how easy it is to have Auto Shutdown Manager do automatically some tasks that you would have been compelled to do by hand. When it's ready to shutdown the system, Auto Shutdown Manager will let you know and will allow you to postpone the procedure or cancel it.

You don't have to be a computer ace to deal with this software and if you are really a beginner in this respect, you can always keep the default settings of the application and only set the shutdown time. You won't be flabbergasted by Auto Shutdown Manager's appearance because it isn't flashy, or adorned with beautiful skins and color schemes. It doesn't need to and I think this is the main thing about Auto Shutdown Manager: if it isn't strictly necessary, you shouldn't have it because little plus little equals more and simplicity is the keyword for this kind of background applications. Auto Shutdown Manager will alert you both visually and acoustically but only if you choose so, otherwise it will keep quiet and do the job it is supposed to do.

Bottom line is that Auto Shutdown Manager does very well what it is supposed to do and it's very thorough when doing it. It has lots of features, which you don't see in many programs of this type, but for the simple job of shutting down the system I've seen many applications that are not as expensive or even come for free. But you know, of course, that you need to pay top dollar for top services sometimes.

The Good

Easy to use, packed with lots of detailed features that will probably appeal to most users, especially to power users, it runs in background and has a relatively low memory usage.

The Bad

It would have been nice to have the possibility to change the "always on top" setting when bringing up the main window. A help menu will be useful for the not so experienced users and the self-extracting archive interface should come at least in an English version for the users that don't speak German.

The Truth

Auto Shutdown Manager is meant to be a Power Management tool and not a simple computer shutdown application, so the wide variety of functions it comes with truly make it a rather professional utility. It is not difficult to work with, it's quite useful but it comes at a price that can send most users in search of a cheaper solution, even though that one will probably lack some of the features and possibilities Auto Shutdown Manager offers.


Here are some snapshots of the application in action: