Shutdown Panel

Powering off your PC doesn’t necessarily have to involve you anymore, with an abundance of methods through which to automate this process. In case you don’t want to invest effort in creating shortcuts through the command line interface, then you can use Shutdown Panel to quickly access your computer’s power options.

You can take the application for a spin shortly after setup is done. In case you want to perform thorough testing, make sure to save all your work because every possible operation means either kicking you out of the currently logged profile, or powering the computer off, none of which saving your data. Just make sure .NET Framework is on your computer.

A small panel shows up on launch, and selection of a function is all it takes to put it in motion. You options narrow down to a system shutdown, reboot, or logging off. Unfortunately, these are the only functions, with no possibility to add more, such as hibernate, sleep, or lock the station so others can’t snoop through your stuff.

Truth be told, it can take more time to power off you PC through this method rather than using default functions. There is, however, an alternative to make the window show up instantly on your desktop. This is done by assigning a hotkey command to the application’s shortcut so you can launch it regardless of your location.

As such, the application is nothing more and nothing less than an alternative shutdown method. It would have been incredibly useful to see a built-in scheduler to delay the operation for a bit, or to trigger a function whenever a specific process closes.

Bottom line is that you’re not always around to power off your computer, but Shutdown Panel doesn’t really help either. It only provides a different way to power off your PC or log off, which can take more time than regular methods, having a significant impact on overall practicality.