[ham90mack]

What exactly do you mean? Pressing and holding the power button to turn off your computer is always a bad thing unless you absolutely need to. However, since Windows XP came out (and maybe 2000, but definitely not 98) pressing, not holding, the power button will trigger sleep, hibernation, shutdown, or nothing at all depending on your power settings. If you set the power button to trigger a normal shutdown when pressed, then there is no problem with pressing it as long as you do not hold. Just don't try it on older computers, such as Windows 98 and previous version computers, because most of their power buttons literally are power buttons (immediate shutdown).

So yes, the power button may be a shortcut in modern computers for shutdown. From my experience, some modern computers actually have the power button set to sleep by default instead of shutdown.