If you normally turn off your computer or laptop by holding the power button until you turn it off, you should think twice.
A long press of the power switch cuts off the power supply suddenly, so you may corrupt the operating system or lose data.
In your place, you must turn it off in an orderly way, using the computer shutdown option provided by the operating system or pressing the power button once (without holding it) to initiate a soft shutdown or put the device into hibernation.
What is the use of holding the button down?
In the past, most power switches physically disconnected power to the device. When pressed, the circuit was broken and the flow of electricity that powered the device stopped.
Today, most power switches for smart devices such as computers, tablets, smartphones and game consoles are “soft switches”. When pressed, they send a signal to an intelligent circuit to initiate a shutdown process that is usually controlled by the computer’s operating system.
Sometimes this shutdown process doesn’t work properly, so many switches have a long press mode for several seconds (instead of a momentary touch) to interrupt the power supply. But this is not the ideal way to always turn off a device: it should be reserved for emergencies only.
Why isn’t it good to hang up with a long press?
Computers must perform a software-controlled shutdown procedure to shut down without damaging the device’s file system or the device itself.
Sometimes a computer can use flash or RAM storage to temporarily store data or settings, and if the power is suddenly cut off, the operating system will not have the opportunity to save this data permanently.
Also, it may interrupt the burning process, which may create incomplete or corrupted data, causing the device to malfunction.
Therefore, you should always shut down the computer in an orderly manner and limit long presses to those times when there is no other option.