Here’s a touchy question, are you good enough to run your machine as an administrator? I say no. And if you would have asked me that a year ago, I would have had a different answer. The owner of Solution Innovators challenged me to NOT run my machine with administrator rights at all times. Many people do and survive, but it’s a risk. What risk you ask?

If the phrase “running as an administrator” is greek to you, you should probably listen up. On your computer (doesn’t matter, Windows, Mac, or Linux) you have an user account. It’s probably named after you, after all, it is your computer. Well each user account has specific privileges, what we call rights, or permissions. If you operate your computer with administrative privileges, it means you can make changes to some very important system files as well perform what seem to be valid tasks as installing software or hardware. However whether you know it or not, the programs you run (and the ones you don’t) also have administrator access (generally speaking) and this creates an opportunity for bad things to happen.

Example 1: You accidentally make some changes or deleted important system files – now how do you get them back? Oops…

Example 2: A virus is downloaded without your knowledge and now has access to delete or infect the core files of your computer. It’s going to be very difficult to clean that computer and the safest bet is to reload the operating system which means time and money…Oops.

Example 3: Nothing tragic here, just some thinking. When you need administrator privileges for a task, installing software, hardware etc, you may be able to authenticate with your administrator account right then and there, or you simply have to logout, login as administrator, perform your tasks and log back in as yourself. This isn’t the end of the world and it actually got you to stop and think about why you have to put in your administrator password. “Do I really want to make these changes? Could there be any significant repercussions for my actions?”

So you’ll find a lot of people run as the administrator, however I do not and it hasn’t killed me yet. Think about it.

See you next time
Matt