I submit that it is a lazy user who doesn't shut down/close running applications when logging off or shutting down their PC...
I submit that it's Windows "Professional" which decides to reboot the system in my absence and without my permission. Like philshort noted, it would be *very* nice if VMware chose to suspend the vms if at all possible, instead of powering them down. I lost work due to this. I have found a way to prevent Windows from auto-rebooting in my absence (which should obviously be the default - my jaw is still dropped at this audacity; apparently installing Silverlight (which I found on my system this morning) was more important than what I was doing) but VMware could handle this more gracefully too. Or is there a setting/option I have missed?