There are many reasons, some more important to corporate end users, some more applicable to home users, but the do all apply to all at some level
- End user operating systems are not designed for long up times, so giving your system regular (daily) fresh startups help keep your computer running effectively. This gives your system its chance to do its internal upkeep as most end user applications only do so at their startup and shutdown.
- Leaving open files risks their integrity. If the computer comes down for some reason (blackout, software crash, pets or other animals) they can easily be corrupted causing your data to be lost. Backup systems also tend to have issues backing up open files possibly preventing your files from being properly backed up preventing their restore in the case of your open file being corrupted by coming down improperly.
- You impact the maintenance of any other systems yours is connected to. Before doing any maintenance (scheduled or emergency), system administrators have to make some effort to deal with the connections to their systems, therefore increasing the costs of providing their services. You also annoy the administrators of those systems therefore reducing the likelihood of fast and friendly service when you need it.
- Leaving systems on when unused is a significant security problem. Someone could sit down at it and pretend to 'work' as you, perhaps even sending your boss a very angry resignation or claim to the police that you are the pervert assaulting young kids in the neighborhood. If you have your personal banking on the system, you could lose your entire net worth or be put you in debt for far worse. Even if you are protected by a firewall and are patched to the most current levels, there will still be brand new hacks that might be able to get into your system for the same hostile purposes.
- Saves costs, both in direct electrical costs, in cooling costs, and wear & tear on systems
- Much software auto-updates themselves as you work, but they don't take effect until they are restarted. Most importantly this applies to the security patches, so that you are still vulnerable to the latest just patched hacks until the restart, and those issues are being found and fixed daily. Some systems are now forcing a restart when they go too long without that restart, leading to those file integrity issues noted so long ago above.
- In our increasingly connected world, that cloud of other computers is constantly shifting. While it is supposed auto reconnect and all that, some of that auto-magic still needs those periodic start fresh discovering where things are, and the shift to the next level of security ciphers.
The push back and the balancing act.
- Even with how our equipment has gotten faster, we keep doing more with them, so we have more setup time and processes. Essentially the time from pressing the power button to being able to do the thing you need to do, hasn't changed much for any significant type work. None of this changes all the points above. So perhaps we will tolerate not having systems restarted every day, but we still have to push for at least reboots once a week and demand them at least once a month.
Last updated 2022-03-12