Some installations or settings changes require you to restart your computer. In most cases you don't need to actually reboot it, you only need to restart the explorer.exe process.
You have more people using one computer and you don't want them to be able to shut it down using a shutdown button on Windows logon screen, this is how you remove it.
Windows 7 have a nifty feature which combines the windows of opened applications under the same taskbar button. If you don't like it you can always turn it off.
If on your Windows 7 computer opening programs, saving documents, browsing the Internet and other every day tasks are getting slower, this is how you speed up things without installing an additional program.