n.  It does have a major advantage,
   though: the terminal program will stay connected across Pico reboots.  The
   virtual COM ports always reset every time the Pico resets, which makes it
   necessary to close and re-open the terminal window.  This is quite annoying
   if you're rebooting frequently, which might be the case during your initial
   setup work.  This doesn't happen with a physical serial port, so it's a bit
   more convenient to use, which might make it worth the extra work to set up.
   In