As much as I'd love to agree, there are some that ruin this curve and can work 14+ hours a day productively, albeit only for a month or two at a time before needing a multi-day break (this does not include weekends)

2 years ago, none of that documentation existed. If you require any elevated privileges, then indeed your app must run at the elevated level, or, you must perform an IPC of some sort with an elevated process (we went this route as well). The Windows (in)security model is a hopeless entangled mess at this point that pretty much no one is going to be able to fix or work with efficiently. If you are security conscious and require a process to run at lowest priv level AND perform an elevated function then you have 2 choices, either run multiple processes and deal with the security on each one, or, better yet, go with a real system (yes, truly) and skip all the work arounds with in process token elevation with proper credentials being provided. MS is the only system I'm aware of that requires the root process to have maximum privs enabled to spawn child processes, since token manipulation has been effectively disabled with 2008 R2/W7. All others can create appropriate security contexts for a given set of credentials.

Judah Himango wrote:

I used to use Outlook or Thunderbird for my email. Now I use Gmail and haven't been happier.
 
I used to use MS Office or Open Office for my documents. Now I use Google Docs.
 
I used to use AIM or Windows Messenger to chat with people. Now I use Facebook, integrated Google chat, etc.
 
I used to store pictures on my computer and email them to people. Now I use Facebook, blogs, and cloud storage to share and preserve photos.
 
I do believe native apps will have a role in the future. But, as of 2011, Windows apps suck monkey balls[^]. We'll see if MS can reverse this trend with WinRT/Metro.

Not that's pretty funny. I tried gmail, and after traveling around a bit with my laptop, dropped back to a desktop client asap. Nothing like not being able to view/respond/edit/sort/etc your mail while you're out of reach of a wireless network. Then there's the security concerns (yes, I don't trust google) While I don't like MS Office nor OOO particularly well, they both blow the doors off of Doodle Docs. I couldn't see using Google Docs for anything more than publishing a doc created elsewhere. BTW, I also have a business Google Docs account, provided by work. I use a desktop IM client. With optional PTP/client to client encryption. Again, there's that whole trust issue. I don't. I wouldn't trust the cloud, blogs, and especially not Facebook for anything I found important. Not only that, it would take me months to upload even a part of my data. HD film just doesn't travel well even on broadband. Nor do 18MB raw pics. So for these reasons, and more, I'd say that while the net apps are a nice POC, they are barely alpha quality products. Compared to desktop apps, they are like downhill derby racers made solely by 5 year olds from scratch trying to compete with a Camel GT racer. Now, if you like being tied to and affected by the latency of an active connection for everything you do and being restricted to less than 5% of the capabilities of a desktop app, not to mention the real potential of losing anything you're working on when the browser crashes, well, by all means, please do use your web apps.