>         Does "halt" do the same as "shutdown -h now"?

Almost.  According to the man page, shutdown is a bit nicer, since it 
gives users a chance to log off before the system goes down.  Then it 
calls halt() and the system will actually go down.

So I suppose that if you are the only person on the system, using halt is 
not much different than using shutdown -h now

Later.

-- 
Colin Wood                                      ender@is.rice.edu
Consultant                                        Rice University
Information Technology Services                       Houston, TX