Well, that is annoying but then trying to make a few changes to an Mac OS X work station on our network to pick up the local OS X Server time rather than time.apple.com is no picnic either. (indecently I can't find a way to stop the work station adding 10 hours to the time because it thinks the server time to be GMT)
I needed to edit the hosts file and the hostconfig.
To do this I went to the etc folder where these files are found. I tried to edit one of the files in question, couldn't save (despite being logged in as admin). So I went and changed the files permissions - requiring the same password as that which I am logged in with. Still no joy. Next I set the permissions on the ETC folder, requiring password. Great, probably should have done that in the first place - like in windows - folder permission get inherited by the files - right?
Start working on second file, click save - no go. I have to go and change the permissions on the file too.
My point is that Microsoft is not alone in this overkill. I do find that these tasks way more obvious and straight forward to do on Win 7 though.