Microsoft Vet Laments A World Where Even Toothbrushes Need Reboots

Comment Remember when things didn't need constant updating and reboots to work? Veteran Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen notes that the affliction has even spread as far as the humble electric toothbrush.

"My electric toothbrush was acting up," he said. "The internet says that I needed to reboot my electric toothbrush."

"Pretty much no part of that last sentence made any sense 40 years ago."

Certainly, 40 years ago there was no internet in the way it is understood today. Toothbrushes were primarily operated by a vigorous motion of the wrist rather than an electric current. And a reboot was something most people associated with a new pair of wellies.

To be fair, the word "reboot" goes back more than four decades, but it has only recently become associated with everyday appliances. This writer has an oven that demanded a reboot after its clock got terribly confused about daylight saving time, and a car that refused to go into gear without a software update and a restart.

Chen has only to look as far as his own employer: It's been almost 40 years since Windows was first released. Users soon became accustomed to performing regular restarts to keep the system stable. This became an unwanted feature of the operating system as time went by thanks to a never-ending stream of updates, some of which require the computer to be turned off and on.

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The same applies to consoles. Where once the insertion of a cartridge and a flick of the on switch was enough to kick off a few hours of mindless fun, now, if updates have not been assiduously applied, there can be a substantial wait while patches are downloaded, applied, and the inevitable reboot occurs. This, we're told, is progress.

Four decades ago, the idea of a stranger in an online forum suggesting that a toothbrush must be rebooted to make it work would have been laughable. Now everything seems to need an update and a reboot. While technology has improved hugely over the years, the acceptance that everything needs to be "smart" is dumb.

And as for Chen? "Oh, by the way, my attempts to reboot the electric toothbrush were unsuccessful. I had to replace it."

Hopefully not with something powered by Copilot: "I've auto-signed you up for Microsoft Dentistry 365. It'll only cost a molar or two." ®