logging off (another tangent on the power down issue)

[GRAY, PAUL]

It has been my understanding and perception that as various programs are
used (Notably MS Office and Netscape with numerous plug-ins) - they do not
always release their resources when finished.  This effect is then
cumulative and can over time negatively impact the overall performance of
the machine.

With this in mind I have always encouraged our people to log the stations
off at least once a day  to force the stations to 'clear the decks'..

Am I off base here?

Assuming the above perception is correct -- would there be any additional
benefit to restarting versus simply logging off.

FWIW
at this point we use winat and shutdown to go ahead and power down the
machines 
- mainly because that is no harder than using logging them off
except that it does mean we have to manually turn them on.

Thanks
Paul H. Gray
TCC Northeast Campus Library
Hurst, TX 76054
817-515-6623