anyone using XP? (this is an OSX Q.)

MacSub

Saiyan Member
My question is about OSX...

I have heard alot about XP's ability to swich users without actually 'loging-out'...

For anyone using XP, is this true? does it work? and why doesn't OSX use a similar method as an option for quickly switching users instead of a full 'log-out'?
 
Hey there ya it is true --- I am running XP corp edition on a compaq and if one desides to log off and allow someone else in --- it takes seconds and none of ur processes stop completly--- work pretty good



Acidtuch10 ---


PS everyone is killing my server !!!
 
Great, so for the second part of my question....why doesnt apple use a similar technology, just as an OPTION instead of loging out.

(in XP you can do a full log out as well...it is probably very similar to our OSX logout...right?)

This might be the only decent thing that windows has over OSX and in XP in general...
 
XP users -

When you are logged in and running applications, then log out (with the applications still running) - does XP shift that Applications preferences to the new user who is logged in?

For example...

I'm logged in running IE, and all my favorites are loaded...I log out, and someone else logs in. Are their preferences & favorites loaded in to IE, or is the application still using the previous users favorites?
 
That is a nice feature of XP.

One difficulty that Apple would have to overcome is that you typically can't have more than one instance of an application running unless you copy the application file to another location. I don't know enough about why this limitation exists, so I don't know how difficult it would be to overcome.

It certainly is a nifty feature though.

-Rob
 
This is true in XP. Only just installed a few days ago. I will try and see what happens re: user prefs for running apps tonight when I get home. Interesting question.

I just hated XP soo much that after 10 minutes I stopped playing ("playing" isn't really a good description of how I worked with XP... more like trudging through the snow on the way to Stalingrad).

This has interested me enough that I will brave the XP front again.
 
humm, ok I understand what you are saying...so how does XP do this?? Do they have separate copies for each user...that wouldn't make sense...

Just like in OSX with different users, each users 'copy' of an app is set up differently to that user, it would seem that OSX could take advantage of that in this situation as well.

It would be nice if OSX could 'steal' this idea off of XP in the next version of OSX; until now no one has brought this up! I wonder if Apple is thinking the same thing we are...?
 
Just use 'su' in Terminal.app; you can run an application as any user:

su - <username>
$

/path/to/program/to/run

I haven't tried running a Finder window that way; I wonder if it will work....
 
Another cool feature in XP is that if you are ripping a CD (make mp3 from it) XP automatically loads the cover of the CD from a server and adds it as the folder icon.

I think this is pretty cool!
 
Is it that you don't have to save your docs before you switch users and you come right back to your user as it was when you left? Since I never log in as anyone else in X and don't share my computer with anyone, I don't have any use for this type of feature. Root user logins are unnecessary for me as well, i use Pseudo and the terminal app where needed.
Hm, i guess home users would dig this feature, billy could let his mom check her mail and then go right back to Q3 when she's done.
 
yeah, basically thats the point.
I hate logging out, quiting my apps just so that someone else wants to check there email, or run their version of IE just becuase the bookmarks are setup different. I was really impressed to here that XP keeps a saved state of all open apps while another user logs in "just to check there mail", and then goes back 'quickly' to where the original user left off. That sounds ideal and for a multi-user machine!
 
Originally posted by MacSub
humm, ok I understand what you are saying...so how does XP do this?? Do they have separate copies for each user...that wouldn't make sense...

Just like in OSX with different users, each users 'copy' of an app is set up differently to that user, it would seem that OSX could take advantage of that in this situation as well.

It would be nice if OSX could 'steal' this idea off of XP in the next version of OSX; until now no one has brought this up! I wonder if Apple is thinking the same thing we are...?

Well in OS X you can realy only have one instance (not copy) of an application running at one time. In windows you can have multiple copys of the same app running at the same time, like in unix. A good example of this is IE on windows.. in its default set up every IE window is actually a seperate instance of IE. You can change this so that they are all actuall windows of a main IE process but that is not the default (atleast not on win2k).

In OS X its actually quite possible for this to happen, but Im not sure how Apple imposes this limitation. If it was done right and limited to only one instance of an application running per user, then it should be possible to just hide all a users applications and the window server, and spawn another instance of the login window and window server. This would impose quite a load when it happend becuase of all the memory that would be swaped out to HD but it wouldn't be too hard i wouldn't think. They could even implement it using a method like Linux's virtual terminals, that way when you switched users it would just attach the login window to another virtual terminal and switch you to that. I belive there is a way to get X11 to do a method like this on Linux now (its not easy though), and I would think apple could get the window server to do it as well.

The thing I want to make sure never happens to X is that damn 'have a expert help you' feature, where someone can connect to your machine and help you config it from a remote location. MS better make that secure as hell (yeah right) because that will be exploited to its fullest extent.
 
to the user whom said to use the TERMINAL app to run an app as any user...

the point is that first of all XP offers something that Mac OSX currently does not, regardless of whether or not the rest of XP sucks, this will invite windows fans to bash OSX...and why should we leave anything to chance, OSX should be better in every way to a windows OS, regardless of if you use the feature or not.

Secondly, in XP (correct me if I am wrong, I wont touch a PC) using this feature is very similar to logging out, users that log in, on top of a current user on the system no longer have access to that user, as of which you would imply with using the TERMINAL app to access these apps; also, using the TERMINAL to open an app such as 'mail' would then need the current user to quit mail...

In other words, its how easy can we do this...
So XP has something 'good' that OSX doesn't, so the next step is to GET whats missing and improve upon it. Windows has been stealing from us for years, it looks like they finally came up with something semi-original...lets return the favor and take!
 
Don't get me wrong, I hate windows; in fact I am the most anti-Microsoft/PC/windows person I've ever known...(did I say that right?!? Well, you get the point)
 
Originally posted by MacSub
to the user whom said to use the TERMINAL app to run an app as any user...
My only point regarding terminal app was in terms of needing to do things as Root, the only user I ever log in as on my machine. I wasn't advocating using term to run apps under other logins in general.
 
Originally posted by MacSub
to the user whom said to use the TERMINAL app to run an app as any user...

the point is that first of all XP offers something that Mac OSX currently does not, regardless of whether or not the rest of XP sucks, this will invite windows fans to bash OSX...and why should we leave anything to chance, OSX should be better in every way to a windows OS, regardless of if you use the feature or not.
And my point is that OSX currently offers this feature just fine. It's not as polished as XP's method of doing it, but it definately exists and works.

Secondly, in XP (correct me if I am wrong, I wont touch a PC) using this feature is very similar to logging out, users that log in, on top of a current user on the system no longer have access to that user, as of which you would imply with using the TERMINAL app to access these apps; also, using the TERMINAL to open an app such as 'mail' would then need the current user to quit mail...
Actually, the current user shouldn't have to quit using Mail.app if the second user launches it (this is how X11 works under real UNIX), but I'll check on my iBook when I get home tonight. UNIX supports multiple users using multiple applications from the same box, or even remotely. The only question is, how much of this did Apple put into Aqua?
 
This XP feature is great, and I think OS X should have it. BUT, how many regular families do you know that set up multiple accounts for one computer? I know mabey two or three.....
 
Actually, I think you can have more than one instance of an application in Mac OS X. Just use the terminal, or write a script and stick it in the dock (name it .command).

I know because I've had two instances of the finder open before so I could do something odd.

All you have to do, to, say, launch two copies of textedit.app is:
Launch the terminal, or as stated earlier, make a script.
type this:
/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit &
Then type it again. Now you have two copies running. You can do the same with the finder, as well as terminal, and most other applications.

And I believe that if you su to another user, the app runs as it would under the other user.

As for XPeePee switching preferences on the fly, I bet all XP does is change what something like a short cut points to, on a per-user basis. Maybe some programs have trouble with it, but obviously mickysoft built exploder is fine...
 
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