[dangerous]

Well, unless you add yourself to the sudoers file, then you do indeed need to switch accounts. Try editing your /etc/hosts as a non admin user, or build your apache install etc. Try running fink. In fact for that matter, isn't this thread about not being prompted for authentication details when trying to install OmniWeb, and hence not being able to install to /Applications as a Standard User?

That aside, what do you gain by not running as an Administrator? How is your system more secure? What can an admin do that a limited / normal user cannot? As far as I know, write to /Applications and /Library. Malware doesn't need to write to those directories to do any damage. /Applications is not a "special" directory, it's just a convenient place to store your applications. /Library is pretty much just like ~/Library except it applies to all users. OK, there are some folders in /Library where malware might like to hide, such as StartupItems, but guess what! Admins can't do anything to that folder either without authenticating.

I'm only bothering with responding to this cos you said "Running as an admin account on any OS is about the dumbest thing anyone can do, especially in OS X". That's just wrong and when it's in response to me saying that I run as an admin user, you are effectively calling me dumb. If the Omni guys have an installer that doesn't work if you aren't an admin, what does that tell you about how they run their systems? You are welcome to run as a standard user if you want, but don't kid yourself that your computer is more secure because of it.