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[Thief^]

Which is of course why, after running a program as an administrator and specifically allowing myself to do so, I didn't have the permissions required to change the priority of said program's task. Or why I couldn't delete a file out of Program Files despite allowing myself access to the folder, giving myself permission with UAC, and confirming the file action. Nope, no permission. That kind of stuff doesn't happen as much in 7, but by the gods it happened to me a lot with Vista.

The former is because the task manager program wasn't run sudo. It's the same deal in linux, you can't modify a process launched with sudo unless you use sudo again.
The deleting thing may have been that the file was in use, unlike linux windows doesn't ghost files to allow them to be deleted or overwritten while open. Sometimes it's the thumbmnail generator that has the file open that's causing you to be unable to delete it

[Starver]

The trouble with Windows is that it's been built from a no-security basis on up.  Which means when they do put in security features, it breaks things.  (And when someone keeps having to click "Yes, run it!" for Admin access even for changing the computer's time[1], they get used to "just clicking it", and you know where that leads.)

I'm not saying there aren't good things in there, but still using a Win98 machine and a W2K machine at home and predominantly on XP myself in both personal and work settings, I'll admit that I get annoyed by Vista when I have cause to use it and I get on with Seven mostly because it's less annoying than Vista, but wouldn't recommend it as a technical interface over XP.  As someone who doesn't demand the latest games, XP is also sufficient for most of what I do (it's not actually getting worse, over time, just not getting better, so what some things now demand isn't easily provided, or at all, through XP...)


Anyway, that's me.  And when I get a brand-new machine I'm going for a Seven (to return to the subject at hand).  Unless I leave it long enough to see benefits to Eight to change my mind, but I don't foresee wanting touchscreen capabilities on any non-mobile device, right now.  I'm not a smartphone user (I've got a Samsung GT-1080i... look it up... and only got that when I did because my even more archaic Nokia blah-de-blah-ten's battery was failing and it was cheaper to get a new phone) so a smartphone-like interface isn't something I'm keen to go for.  I just know I'll be getting a lot of experience with it before I commit myself to a personal purchase, however, which is often how I've kept myself up with the technology curve (if not personally blazing a trail for everyone else to follow) over the last couple of decades. (Although my first Windows 95 machine was a bit of a leap into the unknown.  I nearly stuck with Win3.11!!!)


So, anyway, I'd say Seven is your best bet, in a continuation of me just randomly repeating some of the advice already given.  But horses for courses.


[1] I can see reasons why they shouldn't be able to do this, but the proper Windows way is to use Policies/whateverthey'recallednow for the Admin to restrict the feature, not to make it a hoop-jumping exercise for the average user on their own machine.  And if (I haven't checked) the TIME and DATE commands in DOS still work without UAC intervening then pestering the person who has just clicked on "Change date/time" to get MS's own settings window to say "Yes, I want to do this" isn't helping any.

[miauw62]

I see one error in your post. I think you just mean the command prompt, as i'm pretty sure DOS is no longer part of windows.

[Tellemurius]

technically it still exists as a bootloader for windows though its very limited

[Thief^]

No, the windows boot loader hasn't had anything to do with dos since Windows me...

EDIT: In Windows 7 there's no UAC prompt for changing the date/time A's it's done by one of those signed executables I mentioned.

[Starver]

I'll graciously accept the correction, anyway.  A lot of things could be (and are) a Disk Operating System (it was MS-DOS, except when it was PC-DOS or whatever) and "The [command] shell" would have been more precise, or "the [command] prompt" more in the PC-genre.  At least until it became an "FS" (as that ninja Thief^ did not say, but very nearly did!).  The program itself was 'command.com' (now 'cmd.com', and there have been other variants), so "command" probably ought to come into it, to differentiate it from the various *nix 'shells'.  (I was always a tcsh person, in the old days, but seem to have grown out of that.)

Personally, I'm happy as long as "<WindowsKey>-Rcmd<enter>" gets me a... DOSprompt thingy.  (Although I've previously set it up to a user-defined hotkey of something like "<Ctrl>-<Alt>-<Shift>-D", honestly, setting that up on every computer I'm going to be using for any length of time is more trouble than its worth.)  I wonder if Eight has finally broken that cycle.  I keep forgetting to have a look and see, and I've actually not yet done anything typical of what I do, whenever I've had the chance to play on the system.

Not that this is actually relevant.

[Thief^]

Cmd.exe

[Starver]

That's it!  They've Gone Too Far!!!  This Means Warrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

(IOW, yep.  But, look, I only type the "cmd" bit...  What do you want me to do?  Think about it? ;)

[Alastar]

Nuke the little git and replace it with a Unixy shell!

[nenjin]

DX 11.1 may not be a big thing now.....

But it sends a clear signal that any DX updates are going to be Windows 8 only. When a significant enough update comes out that it motivates developers to code for DX 11+......

There's no telling what the time frame for that is, but it's pretty much a guarantee at some point. I'm not advocating Windows 8, but it's worth considering.

[Leatra]

Yeah, we are going to end up being forced to buy 8 anyway. Might as well skip 7.

[MaximumZero]

I'm mostly posting to watch, as I'm interested in the discussion at hand. Please disregard this post.

[Siquo]

I'm mostly posting to watch, as I'm interested in the discussion at hand. Please disregard this post.

Ah, you're just like glyph, waiting to see how I fail

But first: making sure my father-in-law doesn't screw up the new bathroom. I'd like to shower again, somewhere next week.

[Muz]

No. It also prevents me from running as root, where on linux I can just type "sudo", in Windows I do not have the luxury of such a simple circumvention, and the annoyance is 10 times greater. (This was on Vista, btw, maybe 7/8 is better?).

Right-click -> Run as Administrator
(on Win 7 that is)

It's even faster than Linux. If you're running an admin account, you don't have to enter a password, but there's a confirmation popup to prevent viruses. If you're not running an admin account, you'd just have to enter a password, similar to Linux.

[Leatra]

This whole admin thing seems silly to me really. I like to get things done fast. When people see me using a computer they always say things like "Wow, you are fast" or "Hey, slow down"