"Microsoft just received confirmation of a patent that hands the company the intellectual property of shutting an operating system down.
"I can’t quite recall how often Microsoft has talked about a faster way to shut down its operating system. It is part of the pitch of virtually every new operating system and it has remained an annoyance that it can take quite some time until the software in fact closes running applications and the operating system itself.
"In August 2005, Microsoft filed for a patent to more efficiently shut down its Windows operating system as well as other operating systems, including Apple’s Mac OS X, and override running programs that may prevent Windows from closing."
