I have worked in software development for 16 years. The companies I've worked for have had development processes ranging from rigorous to plain cavalier; however, in all of them someone has at least thought about whether the application would work under restricted logins.

So why is it that a number of software packages I've recently bought refuse to work under anything less than the administrator login? It's one thing needing admin rights to install software, but to run it?

This just seems sloppy to me, and doesn't bode well for the quality of the software. Windows has supported multiple users for well over a decade now, and we are constantly bombarded by viruses and spyware only too happy to take advantage of a powerful login, so you would think that  some effort would be made to test under a restricted user.

I have vowed to return the next piece of software that does this, much to my children's dismay as it's mostly their games that are the offenders.

By the way, pet hate number 1? Progress bars that don't indicate progress. Grrr!! 

Kevin Roche