I’m sure most of you already know this - but Windows does not play nicely with true multi-user set-ups. But not just because, generally, more than one user would not be logged in to the same machine.
In a multi-user set-up it is to be expected that all frequent users run with limited privileges. Calling the admin is unfeasible and often should be unnecessary - say I want to install iTunes or Miro [as were the case today] but I only want it for myself to listen to some music. Why do I need the admin for that? This isn’t a feature to make Windows “more secure”, it’s merely a result of the poor original design [relying on the registry so much, for example] that’s been kept since Windows 95
For 95% of the applications that I would want to install on Mac or Linux I don’t need to be admin/root. Sure, they will only be available to myself, but that’s exactly what I’d want - to not confuse other users but get my own tools set-up to be able to do my work1 without so many hick-ups. On Windows the percentage seems to be the other way around.
So when people wonder why so much spyware finds its way around the net, think about how annoying it is to run on Windows without staying logged in as admin. Especially since in XP [and I think the same to be true in Vista] there’s no way similar to sudo for installing things from the user account you’re already logged into. So switch, log in, install, switch back [maybe restart along the way] and.. blah - productivity down the drain.
- Not strictly in a corporate sense [↩]
