Password protecting admin pages

Hi,

I've been getting a ton of dubious "guests" on my board lately. That doesn't bother me so much because there's a nice community of members, and a larger group of mute readers... but lately there have been a decent number of registrations from obviously bunk email addresses (ex: excitement@mail.ru)

I have the current version installed, and feel relatively secure, however, I was wondering if, just for a little peace of mind, it might be ok to password protect all the admin.php files.

It would be easier if they lived in a folder, and i could just password protect the folder, but i really don't mind entering this extra pasword to access the admin pages. I am the only admin, and thus it would only effect me.

My question:
Do the admin pages function on behalf of moderators and users in ordinary use of the board?
Will password protecting these pages mess up anyone's experience reading and posting on my board?

Thanks.