This discussion is about XP Home - the OS that was intended to replace Win9x, not the OS that was intended to replace Win2000. I'm also not talking about business users - when I set up a network I lock most users down and prevent them from doing much of anything but work. But I won't do the same to a home user because most of them find it frustrating (as frustrating as you apparently do) to use a limited account. They don't have the experience to "tune" it - they just want the computer to work - and I don't have the time to do it for them (especially for free).
I'm constantly installing and testing software (on both home and pro) - limited doesn't have install rights and logging off and on as an admin is time consuming. You obviously feel it's time well spent - I don't. I have two test machines running without AV - their only protection is the XP firewall and my ISA firewall. I'm not worried about working as local admin without AV protection and I'll set up a limited account if I need limited rights for testing, which I do occasionally. These machines are exposed to the internet the same as my other systems, although not for as many hours a day - I use them for NNTP, email, and web surfing in addition to testing software. -- -----Original Message----- From: Windows Home/SOHO [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bernie Cosell Sent: Monday, August 01, 2005 9:39 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: XP/Home- policies and groups? On 1 Aug 2005 at 16:12, Diane Poremsky wrote: > Limited is really limited - many people run as admin if they ...want to get any work done. Bill is the only person I know that's ... using limited. I have a few limited accounts set up for testing, but ... they are too limited for real work. ... How smug, ridiculous, and insulting: I run in a limited account ALL the time (on all OSs I use), but I guess the petty stuff I do doesn't count as real work. FEH. Maybe your problem with a limited account is that you're not familiar enough with the XP protection machinery to get it set up properly, since it is a pretty minimal problem if you get it tuned... > Limited accounts are more for kids (and adults) who screw things up. ..I'd never recommend it for a responsible person. I was going to reply to your post, but I'll let this stand as one of the of the most surprising and basically ill-informed and wrongheaded comments on operating system security I have *EVER* read. The very notion that one makes an OS secure for the sake of the incompetents and the irresposibles is both laughable and ridiculous [and not to mention inconsistent with your arguments about why it was OK for MS to leave XP/Home with an unuseable limited account] -- ---------------------------------------- WIN-HOME Archives: http://PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM/archives/WIN-HOME.html Contact the List Owner about anything: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Official Win-Home List Members Profiles Page http://www.besteffort.com/winhome/Profiles.html
