Daily downloads with apt / aptitude?

[thunderstar@loop.de]

Hi all, 
I think, I missed a change some time, for I noticed, that when I let my 
notebook run over night, it shows that all new packages are already downloaded 
(but not installed).

As I cannot remember to have activated cron-apt (although it is installed), I 
guess it has something to do with /etc/cron.daily/apt or 
/etc/cron.daily/aptitude.

However, this feature is nice, but when was this change implemented. I could 
not remember, heard abouit it, yet.

Would be nice, if someone could enlighten me.

Related to this thing another question: Is there already a debian way, to 
force those new downloaded packages to install, when the system is being 
shutdown by the user? (Similar like windows does).

Thanks for any answer.

Best 

Hans