Leaving your computer running all the time isn't good for its performance or for your electric bill. Sometimes, though, you don't want to sit around waiting for a large download to finish so that you can turn off your computer before you leave or go to bed. Auto Shutdown - InBasic is a Firefox add-on that will automatically shut down your computer when your downloads are complete, provided you're using Firefox's download manager.

The extension installs easily, and once we'd made the required restart of Firefox, it appeared as a small power button icon in the browser's status bar. When Auto Shutdown is enabled, the icon turns red, and when it's not, it's gray. Enabling or disabling the add-on is as simple as clicking the button. When Auto Shutdown is enabled, it does exactly what the name implies: once all downloads are completed, a warning dialog is displayed, and then the extension shuts the computer down. Users can set how long the extension waits before initiating shutdown, and we especially liked it that users can choose to have the extension force Firefox to exit. If you'd rather hibernate or restart your computer instead of shutting it down, Auto Shutdown can handle that, too. The small chime sound that plays when a download is completed is a nice touch, and one we wish Firefox had on its own. There are advanced features as well, including the ability to edit the shutdown script and idle script, although these come with a warning not to change anything if you're not an expert. Since there's no Help file, users who aren't experts but would like to know more about these features are out of luck. Still, on the whole, Auto Shutdown is easy to use, and we think it's a great choice for shutting down your computer without a lot of hassle.