Shutting down OS X

There are three options that can be selected for shutting-down OS X, these being:-

1. Sleep - This puts your Mac computer into hypernation mode, whereby the screen goes blank and the hard disk powers down. Moving the mouse or pressing a key resumes normal operation.

2. Restart - This option shut down your Mac and restarts it again. This option is particularly useful for re-starting your Mac after new software has been installed.

3. Shut Down - This shuts down your Mac completely. Note, make sure any open documents are saved before clicking on this option (OS X prompts you to do this).

Clicking on the Apple menu accesses these shut down options. The Apple menu can be accessed by clicking on the Apple icon at the uttermost top left corner of the desktop and can be accessed regardless of what programs are running. Other options are Force Quit and Log Out 'username'. Whilst I guess the latter is fairly self-explanatory i'm not 100% sure what the Force Quit option is used for.

Updated 17:30 1st June 2006.

Force Quit is from what I understand similar to Ctrl+Alt+Del and basically allows to force a misbehaving or otherwise frozen program to be shut-down.