I remember Symantec used to have UAC like features in a few of their older security suites. I guess MS figured it would be better to have UAC on Vista.
As a power user, I need to go to Control Panels and access system level applications like Group Policy, Console Management etc on a regular basis daily. UAC warning happens in pretty much in every System Property pages. Many of them I feel is un-needed at all: Why need UAC access for re-checking Windows Experience Index or even Device Manager? Why need UAC for copying files to the guest shared folders? Wouldn't it be better to request permissions only when settings were changed? The most annoying part with Vista is the "administrator" option, why do I have specifically choose to "Run as Administrator" when I am already logged in as administrator?
I understand it's nice to have some more control, but to me it's more of an annoyance and counter-productive when I am servicing machines that run on Vista. Also, based on customer feedbacks, they get confused so much with UAC warning even they are doing legit things like installing Printer drivers. Installs tends to screw up because people click "cancel" as they are afraid of clicking "continue".
Mac does the UAC function better by only prompting when settings are made to the system. With Leopard, you can lock down the settings in Administration mode, until you want to unlock them to make changes.
With a comprehensive suites from Symantec, UAC seems to become unneccessary as the security program will prompt you for awkward changes in the system.
People these days seem to beg manufacturers to downgrade their systems to XP. Where in my case, I am running dual boot because Vista is faster than XP in my desktop. It is however restricted to DX10 gaming only.
Philip |