>>My guess, Win 7 had UAC turned off and you didn't hit the instances where you still have to elevate.
>
>So, basically, if one would turn UAC off, that should resolve most of the issues.

Yikes! Talk to anybody in the Unix/Linux world and they'll slap you silly.
You only log in as "root" only if you need to do administrative work -- and even then, you should avoid logging in as "root" --- you "su" or "sudo" only when you absolutely need to do so.