I had a tech support job where one repeated irritation was end users that had removed and reinserted a USB to Serial device. Windows then randomly assigns COM92, or whatever. Now you have to walk the customer through figuring out what COM port got assigned.
The Windows UI (via Device Manager) allows you to change it, yes. The end users in this case, though, just wanted their "serial connected thing" to work, and weren't terribly technical. Also, if you remove and reinsert it (especially to a different USB port) it doesn't remember any of that.
But that’s not persistent. If I tell Windows that a specific flash drive gets T: (for whatever reason), if I unplug it and plug it in somewhere else, it will still be assigned T: (assuming it’s not in use by something else). With COM ports, if I say that this Arduino Mega gets COM10, then I unplug it and plug it back in, there’s no guarantee it’ll get COM10. That seems ridiculous IMO.
