Some installations or settings changes require you to restart your computer. In most cases you don't need to actually reboot it, you only need to restart the explorer.exe process.
If the DVDs, USB sticks, phones, cameras or any other media and devices are automatically starting to play or open explorer windows and your don't want them to, this is how you tweak the AutoPlay settings.
Windows 8 also brings a very transparent tool for examining global indices, where you can also optionally keep track of the value of individual shares.
If you leave your computer running on a 24/7 basis you might be interested in determining the amount of uptime that has accumulated since the last reboot.
