Robert_Charlton - 4:48 am on Oct 27, 2009 (gmt 0)

Great discussion.... I've got to confess that I continue to run XP as the administrator rather than as a user, and I do know better.

I'm not having guests over, but I am connected to the web. Part of the reason I continue to live dangerously is that I understand there's a huge PITA factor when running as a user.

I assume that running as a user would affect any software upgrades and system status changes, where I'd have to log in as an admin to do any system-wide maintenance. I can imagine it might even affect system backup procedures I currently have in place (I clone my entire system to rotating external drives every few days, eg, and I disable write caching when I do that... then re-enable it after).

What about things like Windows patches and updates, new anti-virus definitions, etc? Can someone succinctly describe the day-to-day extra hassle that would be involved in not running as an admin. I'm the only person on the machine.

I assume that guests might still look in my medicine cabinet, whatever I do.