Best account choices for a personal Windows 8 system?

May I ask here (and, if not, where else*) for advice on
appropriate choices of accounts to set up on a new
Windows 8, Pro, 64 bits, tablet system?

*I'm using Google Groups, which isn't very flexible.

The PC will be mostly for my own use, including
web browsing, watching video and playing audio,
speech recognition control, and maybe some
programming, for instance in Java. I expect to
use mostly "desktop" programs, but I may also
want to buy "Windows Store" apps, install
Windows 8.1 when released, and, of course,
use "Windows Update".

The standard advice seems to be to have one
"administrator" account which is a
"Microsoft account" - for everything.

Alternative options include local accounts
(without Microsoft account), standard accounts
(without administrator and software install
privileges), and "Family Safety" (restricted
settings).

I haven't found any book or web site that gives
comprehensive advice on what account to use when.

And so for instance: can I use Microsoft services
without using the Microsoft account to log in?
Can I buy software or media using one PC account
and then run it in another account - surely,
or what's the point of other accounts? Or,
can I use more than one PC account with the same
Microsoft account?

And, can accounts share the same speech recognition
settings (voice profile)?

Or, I suppose I can have a Microsoft account
that's a standard account most of the time,
and promote the account to an administrator
if and when it's needed?

Thanks,

Robert Carnegie

 

I don't use cloud services since the NSA reads them. However, it is
considered bad to do everything from the administrator account.

I absolutely hate the "virtual store" or whatever win7 calls it. I
assume win8 has the same scheme. I simply hate to have to find where a
program stashes the data. I still like to keep the OS on one partition
and user data on the other, but the MS scheme puts user data on the same
partition as the OS. And good luck finding data stashes in the nether
regions when using samba from another machine.

 

Thanks for answering. I think I agree with you on a lot of this - but on Windows 8 things are different.

There are indeed "cloud" storage and "cloud" applications,
and these are indeed probably stained with the greasy
fingerprints of the NSA, but "Windows Store" is where to
buy software, apparently, and also where to get Windows 8.1
later this year. "Modern UI" software is only available
in this "Windows Store".

As for the administrator thing - from Windows Vista
onwards, I think, there's at least been UAC security,
so that even when you log in as administrator
(and some computer owners despise passwords anyway),
you have to click on special permissions boxes to allow
administrator things to happen - such as installing software.

I still don't like it - but I do have a "get started
with Windows 8" book that, for instance, illustrates
"Family Safety" by showing a machine with two user accounts
in existence; Mr. John Smith (administrator) and little
Johnny Junior (standard account with Family Safety
and probably a curfew). Or equivalent names.

I agree that Mr. Smith should have considered creating
a standard account for his own everyday access.
Perhaps there is a good reason why he didn't.
Perhaps the computer is exclusively for Johnny Junior's
use. But that doesn't seem to be the idea in the book.
Having said that, Mrs. Smith ought to get her turn, too.

And so I feel that I still don't know what is the best
thing to do.

(Although, for now, this computer is to be just for me.)

 

I think it's useful to have one account (MS or local) that is used strictly
for administrative work, and one for each user on the machine that is a USER
level only account. When something requires elevation, you'll be prompted
and you can elevate. But it adds an additional layer of protection that I
believe in.

If you have no particular need to be part of a traditional Windows domain,
then by all means use a "Microsoft" account. (It does NOT have to be an
actual MS account, by the way. Whatever account you've used for
Live/Passport over the years is just fine. ) The nice thing is, if you use
a MS account as opposed to a local one, your software and settings will
follow you between machines.