notice that for some hw parts restart ≠ shutdown & reboot. if you really want to start fresh, shut your machine down once a week.

Actually, it's more or less the opposite. In some OS's (Windows, at least) a reboot does additional purging and loss of state that a shutdown will not do. That's by design, so a normal shutdown/startup is fast, but if you're having a problem a reboot will be more thorough.