I grew up with MS-DOS, and I still open two instances of the command prompt each time I boot. I dig it. It rocks.
Using the GUI is like driving with the windows misted up, if you’ll excuse the pun. That was quite witty actually, I should write that one down.. 
Anyway, I’m slowly getting to grips with some of the “cooler” features of Windows Vista. Last night I discovered the “RunAs” command. It’s been around for some time now (since Win2K I think), but up until last night I never really appreciated it.
Anyone who has spent more than 12 seconds using Vista will know that security is now a major annoyance. I tried really hard to get used to the Vista UAC, but I finally had enough and after about 2 weeks I (like most other people I know) simply turned the darn thing off. I’m hoping that MS will realize that they’re missed the plot and will rethink UAC in Vista SP1.
RunAs works likes this.. You open a command prompt window, and type something like..
runas /user:Bob notepad.exe
Even though I’m logged in as “Gary”. I can use “RunAs” to start a program (Notepad in this example) as if I were another user, in this case “Bob”. This is cool. For starters, Bob can have different permissions to Gary, so I can easily run the same EXE as Gary, then as Bob, to test how it behaves with various security settings! Cool.
The reason I was playing with RunAs last night was actually because of Skype though. I was watching TV and suddenly thought to myself, “Hey! I wonder if I use RunAs with Skype if I could get two copies of Skype running on the same PC side by side!” How cool would that be!
One of my products is something called J-Skype which lets Clarion programmers integrate Skype into their own software. I have three test computers set up in my office, all running Skype. It would be cool if I (and others) could run several copies of Skype on the same box though, which is why I got excited about RunAs.
It doesn’t work.
Not because of Vista, but because of Skype I suspect. Apparently this actually does work on Win XP, but not on Vista. Bummer.
Oh well, I tried.
