New switcher here

Hi guys

I've been lurking round here for a while, doing alot of reading and I have finally taken the plunge and bought a 24" imac with 256Mb video RAM. After seeing the 20 and 24 next to eachother, there was no way I could get the 20". It should arrive next week, then the PC's going in the bin where it belongs.


Anyway, to the question. I was speaking to an I.T. guy about mac's and he suggested that the first thing I should do when I get it is to make a copy of the administrators account and keep it as a backup, never use it until permissions get broken on my main account, then I can just delete the main account and start again.

Does this advice make any sense?
I intend to install Leopard when its out, is this method suggested a bit like time machine?
I don't want to have to make a choice of what account to log in with at startup (the Mrs won't be able to deal with the choice and get confused) - will having a backup account mean I have to decide or can I just set it to log in using the default account?


Thanks in advance - I'm sure you'll be seeing more of me

I have two administrator accounts with password, just in the case of something going wrong with my main account. I also have an account with password with a status below administrator (that is "padrão" in portuguese, must be "default" in english) that I use daily as my main account. For some tasks, like instaling or deleting software the computer demands me the user name and password of one of the administrator accounts. For some other tasks that demand full acess to the system I log in one of the administrator accounts, and that is needed rarely, once a month or so. But one could also use daily an administrator account, it just me, I enjoy to drive with total safety.

I've heard that before, but have no idea who one would go about doing it and what it's true purpose would be. After reading a few posts in this switchers forum it seems like, other than probably admins stopping by once in a while, expereinced users don't read this forum and us new users are left to try to help ourselves, which is too bad.

i've never heard of having two admin accounts on the computer. i have one account on mine. that's it. should i make a second one just in case? i'm using 10.4.8.

If you add an additional admin account you will be prompted to authenticate each time you change something that alters a program, for example.

This way if you're asked to authenticate when you haven't tinkered with anything, such as updating a program, you'll want to know why.

For this to work you need to change the ownership of your programs, and use an account with limited administrator privileges.

This was covered in some depth on 123macmini.com; when I have time I'll see if I can find the thread and post a link.

Dex said:

i've never heard of having two admin accounts on the computer. i have one account on mine. that's it. should i make a second one just in case? i'm using 10.4.8.

Click to expand...

Why not? What do you intend to do if one day your mac don't let you log in the only administrator account you have in your computer? You will ask nicely?

By the way, and for the poster above, the experience of an user is not measured exactly by his number of posts in a forum. You may want to read some of his post to evalute. Quality is what matter, not numbers.

People interested in this subject, please read this:

10 simple steps for securing your Mac

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20060308081610672

The 123macmini.com thread is here:

http://www.123macmini.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4218&highlight=admin+account+everyday

It links to other web pages containing useful information on this subject.