I was doin some work ove the weekend and was switching the extention cord between my circular saw and beater stereo.  Well, after I plugged in the stereo again after borrowing the power cord, I found out this sucker had a damn soft-power switch!!  Each time I had to reach over and hit the power button again.   That shit got annoying as I did this a few times.

This got me to thinking about the deep hatred I have for soft power buttons.  "Un-crashable" electronics that crash and you have to yank the power cord out of the back, and annyoing situations like on my stereo.  Then there's the ATX computer cases.  Nothing like having to crawl under your desk when your computer gets REALLY screwed up.

Lets hear your feelings.

Soft switches are good, you can set them in bios how you want them to be handled.
I really like the 10-seconds-until-power-down mode, just in case anything hits the button.
Thats really helpful in a computer lab running DeepFreeze (a program that locks the harddrive's image, once rebooted all changes from previous session are deleted), as otherwise everyone complains if they lose 10 hours of work from an all-nighter when they touched the power button with a book corner.

Kharn

"When Ah say whoa, Ah mean WHOA!"


In thr absence of a hard switch, I'll use the 120V reset - pull the power cord.

I can think of very few situations where a soft power switch has provided a noticable benefit to me.  On the other hand I can think of quite a few occasoins where I was seriously annoyed by them.

My last computer (ATX) had some sort of screwed up mobo or power supply.  About twice a month, it wouldn't come on when you hit the soft-power button for some reason.  Every time this happened, I had to crawl under my desk and yank the power cord out of the back, plug it back in, and then it would work.


Then you have "the question."  Do I hold down this button, or do I just hit it quick?

Then there's the common "button delay" where you have a lag in the function of the switch.

Lastly, you have "button hitting syndrome" which can be caused by either "the question" or "button delay".....you just keep hitting that sucker harder and harder cause you can't figure out what the hell is going on.

Quoted: I can think of very few situations where a soft power switch has provided a noticable benefit to me.  On the other hand I can think of quite a few occasoins where I was seriously annoyed by them. My last computer (ATX) had some sort of screwed up mobo or power supply.  About twice a month, it wouldn't come on when you hit the soft-power button for some reason.  Every time this happened, I had to crawl under my desk and yank the power cord out of the back, plug it back in, and then it would work. Then you have "the question."  Do I hold down this button, or do I just hit it quick? Then there's the common "button delay" where you have a lag in the function of the switch. Lastly, you have "button hitting syndrome" which can be caused by either "the question" or "button delay".....you just keep hitting that sucker harder and harder cause you can't figure out what the hell is going on.

+1 grrr

Quoted: when your "soft" power button on your pc is locked up it is usually a system board problem and not a power issue. the "soft" power system is contolled through the power control network on the system board.

I am fully aware of this.  I am upset at the lack of control I am left with, and when that system board starts having a problem, I have to crawl under my desk.  The irony of the situation is that the part of the board or power supply that I was having problems with was the part that controlled the "soft-power system."  Not only did that system keep me from an easy reset, it also was the source of the problem!

you can set them in bios how you want them to be handled.

I've got a few embedded ITX motherboards that have a "always on" setting, but other than that, none of the ~60 computers I have to manage have that feature.  It seems to be getting harder and harder to find a BIOS that has sensible power settings.

My big complaint, other than not being allowed to either turn the system on or off, is that on many of the systems we have, you can't add RAM or swap the processor without physically unplugging the power supply from power.  I've ruined about five motherboards so far this year because I forgot I was dealing with a ATX piece of crap.z