Re: What's the Big Deal with Firefox?

Andrew DeFaria wrote:
> Phillip M. Jones, C.E.T wrote:
> 
>> Well maybe the terminology has changed. when I went to school. A 
>> computer that was turned on for the first time during the day, the 
>> computer was starting from a "Cold Boot". A "restart" was when the 
>> computer was already actively runing and you pressed a key 
>> combination, or from a Menu choice. The power wasn't turned off at any 
>> time (during the restart.)
> 
> 
> The differences between whether the OS is restarted from a "cold boot" 
> or a "restart" are pretty much irrelevant. The point is the OS is 
> rebooted, or to use another term here, reloaded. What was of the OS 
> before is now gone. Nothing survives and the OS, memory layout and all 
> applications are reloaded. That's not a big trick and has the effect of 
> removing many problems that can only be exhibited if one does not 
> reboot, restart or otherwise reload the OS. Things like memory likes and 
> other corruptions can occur with badly written software.

NOT SO!  If you use hibernate, then anything in the way of memory 
corruption, or bad hardware or I/O status will also be reloaded.  If ram 
is fragmented, it will reload fragmented.  If configurations have been 
messed up, they will reload messed up.  Reloading from hibernation is 
NOT like doing even a warm boot!

> 
> Question: Why do you restart at all?
> 
> Try this: Don't restart - just leave your system up and running. How 
> long can it function properly in such an environment.

That depends on what is being done with it, and by whom.
n
> 
> At home my XP box's record was something like 50 days before I just had 
> to reboot. There were problems and I monitored and actively killed 
> processes to keep it running.
> 
> My Linux box was up a good 183 days without problem (that is until I had 
> to power it off because I was moving).
> 
> I've heard of machines at work running Unix that have been up 
> continually for some 5+ years.
> 
> Can you're Mac do that?