I'm considering purchasing and have a question on how it handles multiple users on the same computer. I have a family computer in which, I, my wife, and my 3 children, each have their own separate account/login. This enables them to each have and retreive their own separate emails. However, to simplify maintenance and reduce questions, I'd like each of these accounts to have a single, simple, and consistent menu structure. The problem with my current menu system is that it saves configuration information in individual user folders. While, I can understand that, in many cases this would be appropriate, in my case it means that, to create a consistent menu structure for the computer, whenever I make a change, add an item, etc., I need to log onto and make the change in 5 separate accounts. I'm wondering how your configuration information is stored and if switching to your software could help me aleviate this problem. Thank you.

Winstep Xtreme also saves settings on a per-user base, which allows different users on the same PC to each have their own, individual, environment.

What you can do to alleviate this issue when you make changes (or even after the initial configuration), is change only one of the accounts, make a backup of the settings, and then restore those settings into all the other user accounts.

You will find the Backup/Restore buttons in the Advanced tab of Preferences.

That's basically what I'm currently doing with the other software so that, at least, is not a reason to change to your program.

I'll make the same suggestion to you as I made to the author of the other program. Please consider adding an install option that would allow the user to specify whether he/she wants individual versus global configuration. If the user selects global, then use the %Public% folder for configuration settings.

NextSTART used to do that (ask the user if he wanted per-user or global settings) back in the 9x/2000/XP days. Now Xtreme just uses per-user settings, as that is what essentially everybody wants and needs, sorry.

Furthermore, configuration settings are stored in the Windows Registry, and, at least since Windows Vista, applications no longer have access to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE unless they are running with high privileges (and you don't want to run Xtreme with hight privileges, as that would break drag & drop because of the Windows UIPI).

If you would ask Microsoft the same thing in relation to Windows, their answer would likely be 'share the same Windows user account between all the users of your PC then'.

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but if you want the convenience of having multiple user accounts on the same PC, then you must be willing to abide by what that implies too - I already provided a simple work-around that would imply minimim effort on your part.

I suspect you will get a similar reply from the author of the other program.

I must say that I don't agree with either of these. I doubt that Microsoft will tell me to share the same Windows user account when each user is using Microsoft Outlook for email and needs access to their own email account.

Nor do I agree that having multiple user accounts means that Microsoft has somewhere declared that each user requires individual settings for every program on the computer. I have developed several commercial applications utilizing Microsoft programming tools and my most recent application, developed using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 A) uses an Microsoft software- recommended external file rather than the registry to store configuration settings and B) allows data to be stored either in an individual users directory or the public directory as I suggested for your program. Therefore, I can't agree that the convenience of having individual user accounts "implies" the necessity for individual configurations.

However, it's your software and you can do with it whatever you want just as I'm free to develop my software in the way that I best see fit for it. I wish you the best of luck but clearly, your software is not what I'm looking for and I can now stop my evaluation.

The fact that the only Windows Registry subtree shared by all users (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE) does NOT allow normal programs to write into it, says otherwise, IMO.

The very definition of individual user accounts means that each user has their own individual settings.

This said, I think I do owe you an apology. For some reason, what you said on your second reply (or, perhaps, the way you said it) hit a nerve here. I caught myself writting a somewhat 'agressive' reply until I read your original message again and noticed I was completely over-reacting.

You were simply asking for a feature you need and which is critical for you. My response should have also been a simple 'sorry, Winstep Xtreme does not do that and I don't think it's something I wish to implement at this point unless more users ask for it'.

So, my apologies for going over the top.