I'm a daily laptop linux user, and like you I know how to go a long time between reboots, so I can wait for my computer to start up.
But forget about us, we're already converts, we don't matter. My grandfather (93 years old) is also a daily laptop linux user. When he presses that power button, that laptop better be booted and ready /yesterday/. And when he pushes it again, it better be off before he closes the lid. Slow startup and shutdown times are simply not an acceptable user experience; they are literally the difference between enjoying and wanting to use the computer, and not wanting to bother with it.
And don't think for a minute he's going to learn about suspend, hibernate, power savings, battery life, or whatever. It's just not going to happen. His laptop lives in the closet, so it's going to be off (either by his doing, or the battery running out). When he sees something on tv and wants to read about it, he takes the laptop out, plugs it in, and turns it on. If it's not ready for him when he's ready for it (i.e. now) then he just won't use it.
However, since I've got that sucker booting from power button to firefox home page load complete in under 7 seconds, he uses it all the time. And it's amazing how it enriches his life. You simply can't get computer use to penetrate into lives like his without fast booting and an easy user experience.
The sane thing is to tie power management to the power button.
Light press: hybrid suspend suspends to RAM, also saves state to disk -- system spins down quickly and, so long as it's not been hibernating long enough to drain battery, restores in a second or so. Longer and it will do a boot/restore from disk.
Long press: powerdown.
Many devices have separate "suspend" and "poweroff" hardware (or soft controls) as well.
That's lovely, but you're not paying attention. It doesn't matter how it's set up. It matters how it preforms.
To the non-enthusiast / casual user, closing the lid, pressing the power button, doing a system shutdown, inactivity sleep timeout, and the battery running out are all the same thing: the computer was "on", now it's "off". Asking someone like this to think about how the reason it came to be "off" affects how fast it will be ready for them later is a fool's errand. It needs to be fast in every circumstance.
Normal people just want to get something done. They judge their computer by how easy it is to use and how fast it responds to what they do. That included cold boots, launching program, and downloading webpages. Even if they're doing something "the wrong way", they will still judge it with the same criteria and the same harshness. I want my grandfather to use linux because I can quickly help him and fix things from afar, and because there are very few ways for him to mess it up. He uses it because he really thinks it's better then windows, and that's purely because it's fast and easy, every way he uses it.
For the record, I set it up so the power button does a shutdown, and everything else results in a hybrid sleep. What he understands that he can shut it down if he wants, otherwise no matter what happens (lid closed or not) everything will be the way he left it, even if he forgets about it for a few days or doesn't charge it.
That kind of simplicity is what allows people to think of linux as something they can use, not just some super complicated tool for "hackers" and "computer geniuses". I'm not saying it should be dumbed down or have options removed, but I am saying that making it enjoyable for everyone results in more people using it, and that benefits us all.
But forget about us, we're already converts, we don't matter. My grandfather (93 years old) is also a daily laptop linux user. When he presses that power button, that laptop better be booted and ready /yesterday/. And when he pushes it again, it better be off before he closes the lid. Slow startup and shutdown times are simply not an acceptable user experience; they are literally the difference between enjoying and wanting to use the computer, and not wanting to bother with it.
And don't think for a minute he's going to learn about suspend, hibernate, power savings, battery life, or whatever. It's just not going to happen. His laptop lives in the closet, so it's going to be off (either by his doing, or the battery running out). When he sees something on tv and wants to read about it, he takes the laptop out, plugs it in, and turns it on. If it's not ready for him when he's ready for it (i.e. now) then he just won't use it.
However, since I've got that sucker booting from power button to firefox home page load complete in under 7 seconds, he uses it all the time. And it's amazing how it enriches his life. You simply can't get computer use to penetrate into lives like his without fast booting and an easy user experience.