On *nix, admins can use the setuid flag to allow non-admins to run certain programs that would otherwise require admin privileges. Is there any way to do something similar in Windows 7?

This question has been asked here before for Windows XP, and the answers were generally unsatisfying. I'm wondering if Windows 7 provides a better way.

One idea I can think of would be to use Microsoft's Subsystem for UNIX Applications, but I'd rather not install that on every user's system if I can avoid it.

Another idea I can think of (which would work on XP too, but I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere) would be to create a RunAsAdmin application that runs as a service, that takes a whitelist of "safe" apps and can be asked (from a command line, batch file or script) to run any program on the list as LocalSystem or whatever account the service uses. Is this possible?

Are there any solutions that aren't as clunky as those? Or, has anyone implemented either of the above techniques successfully?