I had a peek at the files Football Manager 2005 had left on my Windows 2000 system, before destroying it all to pave the way for Windows 2003. I was encouraged to see that, unlike previous versions, all the game data was stored under My Documents, so each user had his or her own save games, tactics and all that jazz. Perhaps it was time again to see if lowly Users could play games yet.
So, after installing the new system, I did a quick runas /user:Administrator "control appwiz.cpl" and got the thing installed (I couldn’t work out how to nest the quotes properly to do an msiexec- lord, this least privilege thing isn’t easy). And, of course, all the icons appeared in Administrator’s start menu. Sigh. Let’s copy them to All Users\Start Menu. Okay, try again. A little dialog box pops up telling me I should be an Administrator.
That’s fine, it’s my laptop. I can be an Administrator any time I like. But if we’re supposed to believe this people are going to have to listen to this. I’ve messed around setting up groups for games and trying to work out policies and what-not, but to be honest, if I ever got a virus or some spyware, I can’t imagine it would be as much hassle as trying to get Windows to behave like a real multi-user system.
This is one of the two things I find refreshing when I go back to Linux. The other is debian’s all powerful apt. Why can’t Windows Update check every single bit of software on my machine? What’s the point of being a monopoly if you can’t control the means of distribution?
Bah. Anyway, this is Thom, Administrator, manager of Margate, signing off.
