Advantages and disadvantages

[bernardben]

Can someone explain the advantages and disadvantages of having user accounts on a windows operating system iv had many people says it makes the computer desktop/laptop go slower?

 

[m4cc45]

User accounts = more secure

They don't slow the computer down but installing games / apps, etc. requires account elevation. I'd say they may slow the computer down if it's a poor computer and has thousands upon thousands of accounts.

If you don't trust / want to risk software being maliciously installed then user accounts are the way to go.



M.

 

[theheyes]

Having a root/admin account for doing installs and maintenance tasks and a lower privilege account for day-to-day work has been the standard model for a long, long time. It has many practical and security advantages. The disadvantage is that it is inconvenient.

Whoever told you it slows the computer down were either confused, making a big generalisation or just simply talking rubbish and I can only imagine they were referring to user accounts running concurrently. If you had 10 user accounts logged in running 1 program in each, it wouldn't be that different from running 10 instances of the program under 1 account. There would be a little overhead involved in the former and you'd use a bit more memory, but it would be a big stretch to generally say user accounts "slow the computer down".