I'm aware of the risks.

No one else has physical access to my systems and I have a hardware firewall. I also have backups and disk images if anything goes wrong, and I've never had anything go wrong in 10 years of using the Administrator account in NT based OSes that would have been prevented by using another account.

I'm much more willing to risk breaking something than having to deal with more frequent, but smaller, annoyances.

It isn't so much an issue of doing something wrong consciously. These days exploits can target you without you having to do anything, just through a banner ad on a site you otherwise trust.

Since you only need to be Admin to install software or configure things, why take the extra risk and run as admin all the time?

Just as you wouldn't run as root all the time on *nix you shouldn't runas Administrator on Windows. The tiny bit of increased convenience is not worth the increased risk.

Just saying.

I never actually said that, however I do agree with you 100%.

That was me who said that.



I'm a tinkerer and I install and configure software and hardware virtually on a daily basis.

I do 95% of my web browsing inside a virtual machine anyway.



For me the extra convenience is worth the increased risk. I have no tolerance for nagging prompts, or my system telling me what I can and cannot break.

I grew up with DOS and single user Windows environments where, in general, the OS did what was told, even if what you told it to do would render it completely inoperable, and I honestly preferred things that way.

Not that I have anything against those who do prefer the extra security, but I simply don't need or want it.

Im an Electric engineer student.. I also few engineer aplications that seem to run in 2008 R2 as well as in 7... I been running vmware workstation for a while... Wondering if i should install 2008 R2.. system has 16gb of ram and quad cpu..

I need apps like Multisim, matlab, avrstudio, etc

2 main reasons:

1. I can get free Srv 2008 R2 Std from dreamspark. Although I can get 'free' Windows 7 Enterprise from my college, it requires extending the activation within 180 days(meanwhile if I use it outside my college for more than 180 days so I can't extending the activation by connecting to the KMS server, the activation goes invalid).

2. I hate the 'cleverness' of Windows 7. If you look up to eventlog, or task scheduler, you'll see tons of automatical behaviors there. They may be helpful to people who are new to computer, but are kinds annoying to us advanced users. Also there are other 'cleverness' that takes action when you're doing several specific events, which are also annoying to me. I can't figure out how to turn all of them off.

Yes, it will if you run 32bit installer in XP compatibility mode. I just did that few days ago.

For me however, as a notebook user, XP 64 has another very serious issue - no hibernation with 4GB ram.

This is pretty much the same reason as me. A friend of mine mentioned this site to me and pointed out that I could get the OS free from Dreamspark. Maybe it's more secure, faster, less bulky... it doesn't really matter, the main thing is that it's more free.

From a student perspective you can get R2 for free through dreamspark or if you have a little bit of cash you can get Windows 7 Professional for $30 as long as you have .EDU account with an acceptable college institution.

http://www.win741.com

I just wanted to post this as a comparison between Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Dad's machine:

HP A6230N
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ @ 2.8 GHz
3GB PC2-5300 RAM
320GB HDD
Nvidia GeForce 6150SE

Programs Installed:

uTorrent
Adobe Flash Player 10 ActiveX
Adobe Flash Player 10 Plugin
Adobe Reader 9.3
Adobe Shockwave Player 11
Apple Software Update
AVG 8.5
Cyberlink PowerDVD 9
Gold Miner Vegas
Google Chrome
Java 6 Update 17
LimeWire PRO 5.4.6
Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile
Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008
Monopoly City
Mozilla Firefox 3.6.8
MSXML 4.0 SP2
Nicktoons HoverZone
QuickTime
Spin & Win
Virtual City
Vista Volume Indicator
Visual C++ 8.0 Runtime Setup Package (x64)
Way to Go! Bowling
Shark007 Vista Codecs
WinRAR
Yahoo Messenger

My machine:

Gateway GM5632E
Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz
4GB PC2-6400 RAM
500GB HDD
Nvidia GeForce 9400GT

Programs Installed:

uTorrent
Adobe Flash Player 10 ActiveX
Adobe Flash Player 10 Plugin
Adobe Reader 9.3
Auslogics BoostSpeed
Auslogics Disk Defrag
DivX Codec
DivX Player
DivX Plus Web Player
DynDNS Updater
eBoostr 4
ESET NOD32 Antivirus
Google Chrome
Input Director v1.2.2
Java 6 Update 21
Limewire PRO 4.18.8
Magic ISO Maker v5.4
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007
Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable
Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable
Orca
PE Explorer 1.99 R6
Universal Extractor 1.6.1
Shark007's Vista Codec Package
Shark007's Win7Codecs
WinRAR
Yahoo Messenger




BLUE = Program exists on both mine and my dad's computer
RED = Program only exists on my computer
GREEN = Program only exists on my dad's computer

Both computers have ALL startup items disabled in MSCONFIG and all services enabled. I rebooted the computers so it would represent how much memory is being consumed when OS when its been refreshed (so its a fair comparison)


_______________________________________________________________________________

The Results:



My dad's computer running Windows 7 Ultimate. As you can see his machine is using 64 processes and consuming over a 1GB of memory on startup (1.04GB)



My computer running Windows Server 2008 R2. It uses only 38 processes and 636MB of RAM, 39% less RAM than its desktop counterpart Windows 7.

This is a completely unbiased review of both operating systems that exemplifies their resource usage in their natural state. I have not modified the operating systems in any way other than disabling the startup items in MSCONFIG.