win7 sorrow...
- Thread starter Jagan-dub
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Man of Honour
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That depends on how you would like to setup your system and whether or not you use a lot of software which unnecessarily requires administrator rights. If you would like to run as a full blown administrator and have no inclination of moving over to a standard user account, leaving User Account Control enabled is likely going to be annoying. There is no reason why it wouldn't be. If you are running as an administrator and have User Account Control enabled, you run in a mode called Administrator Approval Mode. When you log in, you are given two identities, one with standard user rights and the other with administrator rights. The standard user identity is used by default which means any operations which request administrator rights will need to be confirmed by you instead of that particular operation having those rights already. The primary purpose of this Protected Administrator account is to force software developers to write their software so it works correctly in a standard user environment and doesn't unnecessarily require administrator rights.
If you would like to move away from an administrative dependency model though, User Account Control is a tool which enables you to do so and makes it much more convenient for you to run as a standard user. This is User Account Controls real value from a users perspective. When ever an operation requests administrator rights, you will receive the Over The Shoulder elevation dialog which will ask you to enter the credentials of the administrator account. This is instead of having to switch to an administrator account when ever you need to perform an operation which requests administrator rights and then switch back to your standard user account. However, by doing so, you're sacrificing security and there are ways for malware to gain administrator rights. Malware also has the opportunity of capturing the administrator credentials when you type them into the Over The Shoulder (credential) elevation dialog. More information about this can be found in the Inside Windows Vista User Account Control article.
The main point to highlight is elevation is there purely as a convenience to the user to enable them to run in a standard user account and hopefully in the the not so distant future, the only software which requires administrator rights is software which legitimately requires it, making running as a standard user even easier. The elevations are not for security purposes. If you're not happy about the insecurities which elevating introduces to your system, you are going to have to switch to a dedicated administrator account which hopefully isn't infected with malware. Any malware which does infect your standard user account will be constrained to that user account, ignoring the possibility of any security bugs in Windows, of course.
Soldato
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Windows utilises virtual folders for badly written software so it shouldn't cause crashes, it just writes the files to a virtual store folder instead of the program files folder.
Soldato
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You would do the world a favour if you switched to Linux rather than XP!
This tbh. Windows has had it's day.
Well yes, UAC has its uses. Especialy with malware/security.
And something that forces software developers to code correctly is a good thing but since vista ive always disabled it. When i transitioned from XP to vista it was the most in your face change that seemed to hamper your actions. Provided you know what your instaling/doing it shouldnt cause any issue.
Ive always ran both spybot S+D and AVG free and have been problem free on the whole.
Man of Honour
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If you're looking for protection against malware, User Account Control isn't going to be a great deal of help. It isn't an anti-malware solution. Running as an administrator with User Account Control enabled makes the administrator account a little safer and any malware which assumes administrator rights will likely malfunction. However, this is merely a side effect of the primary purpose of the Protected Administrator account, which is to force software developers to write their software so it works correctly with standard user rights. Malware which has infected the administrator account can quite easily gain administrator rights which Mark Russinovich discusses in his Inside Windows Vista User Account Control and Inside Windows 7 User Account Control articles. He also demonstrated this in the continuation session of his Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Kernel Changes talk at the Professional Developer Conference a while back.
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Kernel Changes
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Kernel Changes (Continued from 1:30 Session) - (The talk regarding User Account Control starts at around the one minute mark)
You could actually say User Account Control decreases security. If you use your system in the most desirable way from a security perspective whereby you use a standard user account as your main account and when you want to perform administrative based operations you switch to a dedicated administrator account and then switch back to your standard user account. However, if instead of switching accounts when ever you want to perform an operation which requests administrator rights, you elevate from within your standard user account, you have now just introduced an insecurity to the system.
If we come back down to Earth though
D) where the vast majority of users wouldn't be willing to switch accounts when ever they need to perform administrative based operations and would have been running as an administrator before User Account Control was introduced into Windows, if you can get them to run in a standard user account but give them convenient access to administrator rights, despite the insecurities which elevating introduces, it is still a lot better than if they were running as a full blown administrator. In that sense, User Account Control increases security. So, User Account Control increases security due to the very thing which decreases security. Awesome. 
In brief, User Account Control is a tool which enables users to take advantage of a security feature known as Standard User accounts. Whilst running as a standard user is one of the most basic and essential steps to having a secure system, it doesn't protect the most important thing to the user; their data, something which shouldn't be forgotten.
Not going to lecture you on what you should use as you can make up your own mind...
-Facts-
XP doesn't support multicore processors as well. This is largely a non-issue as the biggest benefactors (Applications) of multicore processors generally handle them pretty well on either version.
XP wont support 6gb of ram unless you run XP x86-64 (Which isn't XP. It's Windows 2003 with stuff removed).
--Opinion--
I personally think Windows 7 is a big step up (both in security and handy little features) but I understand some people disagree. XP certainly has the quality of doing exactly what you ask it to without lots of questions and hassle. It's worth keeping in mind if you go with XP it probably won't be supported for much longer.
Hope this helps.