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| Photo by Mitesh on Unsplash |
Just now, I had a hard time trying to reconnect Microsoft's Link to PC to my Pixel 6. It had worked fine for several days, but just today, it won't maintain the connection. It'd just disconnect after appearing to reconnect, then pop up with an error and ask me to relink via a QR code. Tried stopping the app on the phone and end task on the PC, neither worked. Ended up restarting the phone, the connection became stable.
As an IT professional, I *will* tell you that a reboot solves 99.5% of all problems. You will lose a bit of work, but most modern apps autosave your progress... usually.
But have you ever wondered WHY computers glitch out, and require a reboot?
Because computers are made by humans, and humans write the programs that runs on computer.
Generally speaking, programs all have bugs. By the time the programs reach you and me on our PCs, the major bugs have been squashed, and it's only the smaller and undetected bugs that remained. The smaller ones are judged to be tolerable. It's the hidden ones that makes program behave... glitchy.
Programs typically asks the operating system (OS) for a chunk of memory for its own use, and was supposed to release such chunk when it is done with the chunk, so the OS can reissue them to another program. In practice, this "release" is rarely done, and each program ended up with a LOT of small chunks of memory, and when the program itself crash, NONE of those little bits of memory was released back to the OS. The end result is a program that increasing lost track of its own memory, the longer it ran, the worse this gets.
It is typically recommended that you reboot your smartphone ones a day, maybe once every two days. And a PC, probably once a day or twice a week.
And your computer will really feel more responsive after a reboot, and programs will crash less.
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