Why have two users on a laptop?

The only thing I can think of is having a separate one for administrator privileges.

@Seaofclouds Sorry, what does that mean?

@Seaofclouds‘s answer is good, If you have a single account it must have administrator privileges. Running all the time with administrator privileges makes one vulnerable to some kinds of security/bug/virus/worm. Having a day-to-day account without admin privilege keeps you out of that kind of trouble.

Another reason can be a separate account for work, or for a substantial hobby like audio mixing/production. Separate desktop layouts can help workflow.

My laptop has two accounts standard: admin and guest. I never bothered to change it.

@Headhurts In order to perform certain upgrades and to install new hardware/software, you have to be an administrator for that computer. As @dabbler said, being in that mode 24/7 can make you vulnerable for issues.

Ok, thank you. I think i get it. So if you need to have 2 program but someone else is logged into one of them, and you can’t run another program unless you add another user?

@Headhurts – that’s not a complete sentence. Can you clarify your question?

@Seek_Kolinahr I know, sorry. It’s because I’m not sure what I’m talking about. I’m not very technical minded.

Like @Seek_Kolinahr, I bought a new laptop that had 2 users as the default, user + administrator. To me, it’s a minor annoyance, but I’ve never felt the desire to get around to changing it.

@glacial Is it completely different viewing on each user, i.e: what you look at on Google? Also, if you go in the the computer folder, do you see the same regardless of which user you are?

@Headhurts Maybe it would be easier for us to answer your questions if you actually asked us what you want to know. Are you trying to figure out if someone is somehow hiding something by using two accounts? If so, what?

@glacial, No. It’s to do with iTunes actually and trying to have two accounts use it.

@Headhurts Then that’s easy. It doesn’t matter which account you use to start iTunes.

@glacial I already have iTunes. I just can’t get another user with a different email address to use it. My boyfrind said to add another user, but don’t see what that would do.

If you are in Admin mode, you can do anything to the computer, even modify/delete important system files. The problem is, so can any program you run, or website you visit. If you run into malware, it has full access to your system. If you let a person without computer skills try to accidentally delete your operating system, they will succeed.

Standard accounts let you save and delete normal files but protect system files from being edited. Most Linux computers run this way by default for safety. Far less risk of infection or deleting system files, but some programs may not run,and installing programs will generally be blocked as the installation process usually requires editing files that require Admin privileges to modify.

Guest accounts generally are limited to read-only privileges and are often used on public access systems.

@Headhurts Why don’t you ask another question about how to open a second iTunes account? As you can see, the answers you will get to the question that you asked will not help you to understand iTunes better.

@jerv I’m that person with no computer knowledge. How do you know if you are in admin mode?

Although it looks like this might answer your iTunes question. It is easily Googled.

Each account on a computer has a set of permissions associated with it. Programs started by a user run with the user’s account permissions. The Administrator (or root) account has all permissions set to ”yes”- Administrator is allowed to do anything at all to the computer, including wipe out the hard disk. This is dangerous. Don’t do it.

If you have only an account with Administrator privileges, then anyone using the computer or any software running on the computer, has Administrator privileges. Please use the “users and groups” dialog in the Control Panel to set up another user account. Do it now!

I don’t know how to identify whether you are using the Administrator account (or another named account with Administrator privileges) in Windows except by going to the above-mentioned “Users and Groups” part of Control Panel and looking at the users listed there. (The current user’s name is usually on the top of the Start menu IIRC.) On Mac or Linux you can just type
whoami
at a terminal.

@Headhurts There are two accounts on your laptop, right? And you want access to iTunes from both of them? Why? Because two accounts only make sense if you don’t use the admin one regularly…that’s the point. Unless there’s a problem, stay in the user account. You won’t change anything by mistake, and no-one else can, either.

@longgone I can’t get two users on iTunes.

@Headhurts The iTunes question is a separate one. Please consider asking it as a separate question, so that others can find the answer to it should they go searching.

I’ll just leave this here:

http://freegeekseattle.org/wiki/index.php/Security_Basics

@Headhurts Yeah – but as others have said, that’s a completely separate question. I think you’re confusing something here. If you want two different accounts for using iTunes (iTunes-accounts!), ask another question. Regardless of that, you should have two accounts on your laptop. For safety issues. They will not affect iTunes in any way.

iTunes is a separate issue as an iTunes account is tied to a particular person (and credit card). When I had iTunes on my computer, both my wife and I could access it from our respective desktops.

Be warned that using the same iPod/iPhone with two separate iTunes accounts will overwrite your device every time you try to sync it unless you set it up to sync manually instead of automatically. Using the same iTunes account with two separate Windows user accounts will not; they are totally separate things.

@jerv Are you saying that the iTunes settings are different depending on the Windows user account? I would not have guessed that – this would solve the problem. And if all music (regardless of which account purchased it) is stored in the same location, synching would not be complicated, assuming there are not limitations on who can play songs bought by one user or the other.

@glacial Yes and no.

In my case, I was signed in on the same iTunes account on two different Windows accounts. However, because of the way Windows (and Linux) give each user their own folder, I had to do some minor tweaking to get iTunes to store stuff in the “All Users” area so that both of us could access it. .

As for syncing, this is where a little thing called DRM (Digital Rights Management) rears it’s ugly head.

See, iPods are registered, as are iTunes accounts. If the iPod you try to sync is registered to a different iTunes account than the song you are trying to sync, hilarity ensues… and by “hilarity”, I mean disappointment and rage. I don’t have that problem so much since most of my music was ripped from CDs and thus is DRM-free, Songs bought through iTunes, however, have Apple’s DRM all over them, so iTunes may balk when the numbers on the iTunes account and those on the iPod don’t match.

I simplify things by avoiding iTunes altogether.

@jerv Yeah, that’s why I mentioned limitations on who can play users’ songs. I am similarly anti-DRM and anti-iTunes store, so I only occasionally have to deal with finding songs I can’t play (when a friend tries to share something they can’t). However, if I’m not mistaken, I believe that a limited number of people (i.e. devices) can share the same password if the settings are right. This would have to be possible in order for the two-Windows-account thing to synch all of the music to both iPods… although perhaps the users only want to be able to synch the songs they each bought anyway.

But there is a difference between signing into the same iTunes account with different Windows accounts vs. signing into different iTunes accounts with the same or different Windows accounts. I have iTunes installed, and use it frequently with my usual user profile. I haven’t experimented with this, but I would be very surprised if I opened iTunes under the Admin profile and found that the default settings were in place (since I’ve never opened iTunes as Admin). That seems wrong to me.

@rudrapratap For a multi-user system, sharing a profile only works if both people have nearly identical computing needs and habits. I don’t want a desktop cluttered with recipes and pictures that should be filed away into subfolders, and my wife has no interest in MasterCAM or Steam games, so multiple profiles are a must just for reasons of desktops. If we shared a profile, the desktop management would cause tensions and discontent.

Put in non-computer terms, if you’re 5’4” and your SO is 6’0” and you share a car, would you move the seat?

@jerv Very well put.

@rudrapratap I feel sure that any given pair of people holds at least one secret from one another. Even if that’s not the case, other problems come up due to the fact that they aren’t the only two people in the world.
Real, working trust models are not commutative nor implicitly transitive- that is, Bob can trust Carol without Carol having to trust Bob, and if Bob trusts Alice, Carol doesn’t also have to trust Alice even if she trusts Bob. Good trust models are also not global- if Bob trusts Alice to have access to (for example) his email address, that doesn’t give her the right to all his other information.
Even if you trust someone with access to all your information (you shouldn’t) you can’t trust that person’s interactions with others. Each of us is ultimately responsible for the security of any sensitive information we might have, from passwords to bank information. If you share an account with someone, you share global access to all information in that account. You can’t know whether, how, or with whom the other person is sharing that information, whether deliberately or by accident. You can’t know to what extent the other person regards any given piece of information as sensitive or secret. I once used a friend’s nickname in front of another person, and he got so mad he took a swing at me. You never know what people want kept on the d/l.
Separate computer accounts serve many purposes, and compartmentalization of information is one of those purposes- and essential one. If you want to explicitly share information between computer accounts, it’s trivially easy to do. Information should be private by default and shared only explicitly- if for no other reason than to keep us all from drowning in irrelevant BS.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: DO NOT SHARE ACCOUNTS. Issues will ensue.