Dear Software Vendors,

Please, for the love of all that is holy, get a friggin clue and make sure your software runs for users that don’t have Administrator privileges!

Here’s two software companies on my shit list for this inability.

First, Macromedia HomeSite 5.5 completely bombs when run as a normal user. Even after installing the program when logged in as an Administrator interactively (not using runas). No, I won’t be trying your product anytime soon.

Offender number two is Jasc’s Paintshop Pro 8. While it installs fine, it refuses to run as a normal user requesting that it be run with an account that has Administrator privileges. While the message mentions this is a restriction for the Trial version, I’d never buy the full version just to find out that it doesn’t work there either.

Now I understand why people run their crap as accounts in the Administrators group on Windows. Because most Windows application developers are lazy, incompetent, or both.

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