Originally Posted by
maokh
"Start shutting down devices" is no more than a friendly reminder that you will be asked to immediately turn things off. A laptop does take a while to put away, so perhaps the FA is being proactive. Otherwise, with a phone, you can wait until the door is closed..
There are plenty of people who don't know how to use standby on a laptop. Depending upon what applications you're running and the age of the laptop, it can take several minutes to shut down. My laptop is known sometimes to just sit in the shutting down state for a while and I have to use the power button to give it a hard shut off.
You can thank people's lack of interested in learning about their devices rather than alaska for this. You can also thank the geniuses that try to keep all of their devices on regardless for this. They largely ruin things for everyone else.
I do sympathize with the OP though. I don't even bother breaking the laptop out pre-flight as it's hardly ever worth it. I tend to just stick to the blackberry until I'm in the air.