Does the average person actually shut down to the point of doing a cold boot the next day? I have the impression most just tap the power button (which hibernates to disk by default), or else simply walk away and let this happen automatically.
As a quasi-average person regarding computer usage, I can tell you about the way that less tech-savvy people around me deal with their laptops, as I deal less and less with people with PCs:
If it is an older model, it tends to be a matter of "hibernate until it runs so slowly that I have to restart."
Other than that, there is always some hard-core believers that you really need to shut off completely every time you use it.
I have one non-tech-savvy friend who just holds his laptop's power button down for 5 seconds when he's done using it. "Oh yeah, it's great, it shuts down properly and instantly and I never lose any data!" I had to emphatically explain to him that he was effectively playing Russian roulette with his life's work. This is just an anecdote, but while anecdotes cannot set averages, they can be used to find a lower bound on extremes.
