Hard Restart/Actual Power Off?

It seems as if when I hold the power button down or go to "power off" in the menu, that my device goes into a simple standby mode. I mean, it's "off" in the traditional sense of the word, but it takes about 2 seconds to power it back up to my menu screen when I press "power on". Applications like Viigo are even still open and available without having to load up when I turn it back on.

I'm just curious about whether this matters or not. I've restarted it after deleting an app once, and also pulled the battery once, and both of those times took significantly longer to boot the system up.

Not that I'm complaining about this- it's nice to have a quick-startup, but not if I'm sacrificing memory that's being used for storage...especially since I don't have a card yet.

Anyone know if this is normal? Does the BB automatically keep a functional amount of memory reserved to power the system up quickly and efficiently with all apps retained in their most recent states? Just seems weird to me, but I am, as this site so kindly calls me, a "CrackBerry Newbie." :)

What you are experiencing is the normal "off" state. In order for alarms to work, the phone doesn't completely turn off, but it does go into a lower power consumption state. Pulling the battery removes all power and reboots the phone, which has the effect of recovering memory. It will take longer to boot up from a battery-pull restart for this reason.