I feel that this website is in need of some more intellectual discussion, in order to move away from the apparent shovenistic approach our writing staff have seemed to slipped in to unchecked. This article is more just a thought, a musing if you will…

Anyone who has had to deal with a tech support team has more than likely been asked this question at least once. I, myself, a member of an IT support department, have used the phrase on numerous occasions. But the truth remains that although IT ‘bods’ are constantly offering it up as an apparent all-round answer, technicians themselves rarely have the need to reboot a machine. My personal computer is on almost 24/7 and gets rebooted perhaps once a month if there is a power cut or if I install some device drivers.

A PC only really needs to be rebooted when:

• Installing/Removing software which requires access to modify core operating system files
• Memory errors occur (although extremely infrequent due to modern programming techniques)
• A rogue program with a handle on a device doesn’t close down properly, rendering the device either locked or stunting access

But for the average user of a personal computer within an office environment such as where I work, the above situations are incredibly rare. So my question has to be, do we really need to tell users to reboot? For the majority of cases the user is using either Microsoft(R) Word or Microsoft(R) Internet Explorer, which are both items of applications software. Problems in such can be soved by simply killing the process (which is as simple as clicking the cross in Windows), and reopening the application.

I hope that I have managed to convey my point; that although rebooting a machine is a rather drawn out process which causes frustration to the user, and a direct lack of productivity to the company, IT technicians will still instruct users to do a full reboot of the machine in order to fix the problem, despite the fact that it is more likely that time could be saved by simply instructing the user around the problem. Not only is this a direct solution to the problem, but it also saves time and effort in case of a recurrant problem. If it happens again then the user will not bother to phone IT again, they will simply perform the task they were instructed to do last time, hampering employee productivity on company time.

I encourage discussion on this topic as I would like the website to become more of a forum for like-minded people and students to actually get involved and have a say. But maybe that’s just me. I am aware that some writers are just in it for the narcissistic pleasure of being funny to their peers, or perhaps I am wrong…