First and foremost, benefits result from energy - and therefore cost savings. According to several researches, during nights or weekends an average of 20 % of all computers are not shut down at all. Lunch breaks or long absences from the desk not even mentioning.

Nowadays, with energy prices rising, both consumer and enterprises are looking for ways to effectively save energy - but without changing the familiar working style. When looking at a typical Computer’s work day, soon you find out that there are many times when it is running but not being used.

First to mention, Auto Shutdown Manager operates even if no users are logged - on to the system in a so called full background - or service mode. All operations are supported in this ode including power up, power down, restart, standby, updates & patches, deployment and receiving of new settings, Time Rules, remote shutdown, wakeup, reboot etc.

Another pretty unique attribute of the Auto Shutdown Manager is its broad flexibility to define what "Idle" means to the user, to the system administrator and to AutoShutdownManager itself.
It supports very easy analysis such as simply the load of the CPU, HDD utilization, currently running applications, usage of the mouse and the keyboard, pending scheduled tasks, or the analysis of any sounds or noises around the computer.

Starting with Release 4, Auto Shutdown Manager supports Central Management via it’s build in Management Console.
The Management Console allows configuration, updates, management and deployment of settings and policies from one central place to the all network clients or specified client groups.
It also supports daily administration tasks such as remote wakeup, shutdown, logoff users and restart single PCs or selected PC groups. 

See some screenshots and examples

See some awards and further sources of Auto Shutdown Manager

Please find here some features listed by License type.

Auto Shutdown Manager can be used on clients incl. Windows XP, Windows Vista,Windows 7 and on Servers incl. Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows Home Server,  Windows 2008 - in 32 bit and 64 bit versions.