True! I tend to power off if I use the software button, and suspend if I close the lid. I think it’s the difference between “packing up” and pausing for a minute.

Typically, yes. I have a tendency to use sleep when I’m coming back in some set period of time, and power off when I’m “going”.
If I’m walking to a different room I’ll close the lid and stick in under my arm which makes it sleep, or going to the bathroom or cooking dinner or something. If I’m leaving and sticking it in my bag, I tend to power it off.

It’s a combination of not wanting the battery to die in sleep mode, and not wanting to put a heat generating device in my bag even if it’s greatly reduced.

Thinking about it, powering down also drops the drive encryption keys from memory so it’s arguably more secure. Not in the least why I do it that way, but it’s an advantage now that I think about it.

Since I’m more likely to use the laptop like a super-phone, I appreciate it when it becomes usable fast regardless of what state I left it in.

That’s brutal. Is it clustered data storage of some sort? All the most offensive startup and shutdown sequence I’ve seen are giant storage systems.

For a server? Absolutely doesn’t matter as long as it’s not preposterous. Turning a server on can be done entirely linearly for almost every server and the slowdown is irrelevant.

For a desktop? Almost irrelevant, but it should be fast enough so you don’t get bored enough to actually start doing something else.

Laptop? I actually like those to boot fast. I’m much more likely to pull one out to do something real quick, and so my laptop booting in a few seconds makes standing with my laptop on my arm to send a file real quick as I’m going somewhere feasible.