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Finally, I don't have to worry about getting viruses or spyware.  Kudos Microsoft.

0 (0%)

It's a little bit of a bother, but it makes my computer safer.  It's worth it.

4 (5.9%)

It's a good idea, but needs a few tweaks. (like an "always trust this program" checkbox)

25 (36.8%)

Someone should get fired over it / If I have to click "Yes, I started the defrag" one more time...

8 (11.8%)

I turned it off.

26 (38.2%)

Don't know / don't care

5 (7.4%)

Total Members Voted: 64

[Matt]

I'm curious what the community feels about User Account Control (UAC).  It's one of the most heralded features of Vista by Microsoft, and also one of the most talked about.

Developers of all sorts of software have had to do a lot of work to cope with UAC.   I'm curious if the community feels that UAC is a touchdown or a fumble.

Thanks for any insight.

[johnnyboy]

I clicked someone should be fired over it.

I have also however turned it off though (not sure if this option automatically implies that).
If people really are willing to go to those efforts to keep their computer safe they might as well just disconnect from the internet and they'll be 1000000 times safer.

I've always been a Mac basher but to be honest I'm TOTALLY LOVING the Mac adverts right now bashing Vista. I think they are all well deserved and pretty accurate (especially the one with the body guard asking Vista if he wants to accept or deny every action).

I'm hoping Mac do what hey did with the iPod - just such a huge marketting blitz that they take a large market share as a result of it. That might make MS step up and actually get back in the game instead of their current attitude that they own the market, they can be as lazy or uncreative as they want and it makes no difference as there is no real alternat

[prod]

I just turned it off. Not even absolutely sure what it's supposed to do, but I'm def not interested in the computer second-guessing my intentions.

Not sure if anyone should get fired tho - you can turn it off, after all.

As for the Mac adverts, yeah, I like em too, very amusing, if a little geeky.

[Mr ChriZ]

Are you sure you wish to Quote Prod?
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Not sure if anyone should get fired tho - you can turn it off, after all.

Are you sure you finished quoting Prod?
Erm Cancel?

Even turning the thing off isn't simple, and as my brothers found
it's a bit like Terminator.  You think you've turned it off, and then
in the middle of the night, suddenly these little red lights flicker on
you're just about getting to sleep and then
Are you sure you wish to go to sleep?

I keep a baseball bat beside my bed now.
I find it helps quite alot.

[glynor]

The biggest problem with it, and the reason I voted for someone to get fired, is that it was a very necessary feature.  "Just turn it off" defeats the entire purpose of it, but it was so badly implemented that its absurd and no one who really "uses" their computer is going to be willing to leave it turned on.

I'm sure they'll eventually fix it (2 years and 3 service packs from now) but by then so many regular users will have turned it off that it'll be useless.  The perception that it's an obnoxious feature will be too firmly implanted by then, and even if they do fix it, most people will never be willing to turn it back on.  That's really worse than not implementing it in the first place!

If you want to see a good implementation of the same feature, just try OSX.  It happily prompts you for your password when you do certain activities, but it happens very rarely (and only when something is really dangerous).  It's so well implemented that I wouldn't even think of turning it off (if you even can turn it off -- I doubt it).

What mystifies me is that they had to know that it would turn out like this.  I mean, OSX did have a perfectly good example for them to follow for years and years.  Throughout the very long beta process for Vista, I saw near constant complaints about the feature.  They knew that it was bad, but released it that way anyway.... It's baffling.

[mesue]

Glynor said it perfectly above.

I tried to live with it, but after 3 weeks I'd had enough and disabled it. Had to, to get my Slim Devices Squeezebox working like I wanted.

[InflatableMouse]

Sudo. Microsoft? Can you spell "S-U-D-O"?

Sigh .... 

[BartMan01]

Long term it is a VERY GOOD thing.

Short term it will be a pain to deal with.  Existing apps were written before UAC and use practices that are no longer seen as 'friendly'.  Once apps have been revised to be UAC compatible the frequency of the 'prompts' will diminish, but this wont happen overnight.  Just another joy of early adopting.

[lee269]

I voted 'a bit of bother' - dunno whether it will really make my computer safer or not. Since I got a brand new PC with Vista, it really hasnt interrupted me too much, apart from the first week or so where I was clicking on things like mad trying to figure out where things were and what they do. But Im less of a tweaker than I was and much more of a 'regular' user. Id agree with glynors comments about the need for this, but know nothing about the OSX comparison. I can only say it hasnt bothered me, but I can see that for support to really inexperienced user it'd be easier to tell them to turn it off than suffer constant questions - defeating the object.

I havent noticed it much with updating MC, other than when I installed a new build (but I expected that). Firefox/Thunderbird pretend to update but dont until I specifically run them as admin - but Id hope they eventually conform. The only program which prompts me every time I run it is Acronis TruImage (not a surprise perhaps), and it seems that my newly set up scheduled backups work in the background without prompting.

Id always wanted to switch my old XP accounts and run limited as default but never got round to it. With a new PC I wanted to take the opportunity to 'do the right thing' and so far I can live with UAC.

[glynor]

Sudo. Microsoft? Can you spell "S-U-D-O"?

Sigh .... 

Which is exactly what the OSX version is based on.  It works more like kdesu but same difference.    

[prod]

Are you sure you wish to Quote Prod?
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Now Quoting Prod is this OK?
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Even turning the thing off isn't simple, and as my brothers found
it's a bit like Terminator.  You think you've turned it off, and then
in the middle of the night, suddenly these little red lights flicker on
you're just about getting to sleep and then
Are you sure you wish to go to sleep?

I keep a baseball bat beside my bed now.
I find it helps quite alot.

  OK I take it back, heads must roll.

[johnnyboy]

Long term it is a VERY GOOD thing.

Short term it will be a pain to deal with.  Existing apps were written before UAC and use practices that are no longer seen as 'friendly'.  Once apps have been revised to be UAC compatible the frequency of the 'prompts' will diminish, but this wont happen overnight.  Just another joy of early adopting.

Well in that case I sure hope MS upgrade 'windows explorer' in Vista because this sure doesn't seem to be written to take this into account! lol.

I'm sorry but any OS worth its salt should be able to tell the difference between a user moving/creating/renaming/deleting a file using a mouse and keyboard input and this happening automatically via a program/script etc.

If it's being done by a user then the user obviously wants it SO WHY TRIPLE CHECK IT EVERY TIME!
Sorry but they're morons.

As to why they've done it when its so obviously over the top - the best explanation I've heard is that they can now claim they've made the OS safe - it's you the user, by disabling the annoying, in your face, going to harrass you until you cave in and get rid of me, who has made their safe OS unsafe.

It gives them a come back any time anyone calls it unsafe and they want this more than they want a safe OS.

[BartMan01]

If it's being done by a user then the user obviously wants it SO WHY TRIPLE CHECK IT EVERY TIME!
Sorry but they're morons.

It does NOT do that if you are trying to manipulate files/folders that your user account owns or has explicit user rights to, it would only do that if that specific file (or directory) lacks the appropriate non-admin rights.  Most *normal* users (the ones UAC is designed to protect from themselves) are not going to be doing that very often.  I also don't know what you mean by 'triple check'?  It asks me once, I say yes, it moves along.

Not defending UAC's current implementation as 'perfect' (it does need refinement), just hearing a lot of FUD around UAC.   *Most* UAC issues can be solved either by refining the app, running it in compatibility mode, or setting the appropriate permissions.

[Matt]

If you copy a file over the top of an existing file in Program Files, there are three popups:

1) Copy and Replace / Don't Copy
2) You'll need to provide admin priveleges: Continue / Skip
3) Windows needs your permission to continue "File Operation"

We see this a lot when testing with Vista.

[Matt]

One confusing thing is that software could do some pretty nasty stuff with UAC enabled without showing an "admin needed" warning. (corrupt user account, redirect a COM control to a hi-jacked control, read files and registry for data, phone home, etc.)

I'd rather get a warning anytime a program runs that I didn't start explicitly.  Let me pick "Always allow this program" for things I trust.  This would help deal with viruses, scripts, and programs that install crap that runs on startup (iTunes, Adobe Reader, etc.).  It wouldn't interfere with programs I trusted.

[johnnyboy]

If you copy a file over the top of an existing file in Program Files, there are three popups:

1) Copy and Replace / Don't Copy
2) You'll need to provide admin priveleges: Continue / Skip
3) Windows needs your permission to continue "File Operation"

We see this a lot when testing with Vista.

What the cute little puppy said

There are several other scenario's as well where I see this type of thing as well and it's HUGELY annoying.
Just try right click on your 'start menu' and explore that and try create/move/etc some files and folders in there, You'll go stir crazy within minutes and this is a very basic task - its nothing fancy or anything that can damage a system!
I shouldn't need to be confirming everything when I'm blatently using a mouse and manually creating folders or moving them - I'm doing it, dont ask me AGAIN if I want to do it after I say I do.

[InflatableMouse]

Do I sense some frustration?   

It drives me nuts too. That's why I turned it off first thing.

[trott]

Sudo. Microsoft? Can you spell "S-U-D-O"?

Sigh .... 

Yeah:

R
U
N
A
S

[glynor]

If you've ever used it... runas != sudo

They're similar, but not identical.  Runas tries to "trick" windows into thinking that the application is running with the same permissions as the other user, but does not actually launch a separate "shell" and load all of that other user's relevant preferences and configurations.

[MrHaugen]

Why not just ask the user what they feel they have full control over? Like file types for instance. If you say you are an expert in knowing wich files that are possibly dangerous, you would not be prompted when opening any files. If you answered you were a noob, you would get the oposit result. - Asked every single time there was a potential risk.

This way users could have better control over what possible problem areas they would be notified of. This would offcourse only work if people are honest.

[benn600]

It still goes back to the ever lasting issue.  People will get sick of the annoyance and just start clicking YES to every popup.  I don't like it especially because with only 1 GB of RAM, the second it needs to popup and block everything else, my computer halts while it grabs the data from the hard drive.  That's by design.  Nothing else should happen until I click yes.  But it just annoys me.  I don't have trouble with viruses and junk like that so I really don't care.

[GHammer]

It's the same reason I no longer try to get my family and non-tech friends to run firewalls.
They call me every 5 minutes asking if they should allow this or that.
Soon, they are simply hitting 'Allow' without reading/understanding what they are allowing.

UAC has been the same for my unfortunate relatives who have gotten Vista on new machines. They have all disabled it.

One question I have on disabling UAC is if there is any impact on 'user virtualization'.

[GHammer]

From a different angle, I just got a notice from KAV that there was an infected file in C:\Windows. A trojan. When did it appear? No idea, guess a new set of signatures found it. The date on the file was the current date/time so that was no help.
Now, since I have no real idea how long this has been present, I get to decide if I believe the system is compromised. If I decide it is not trustworthy I get to reinstall from scratch because I do not know if my system images are also compromised.

In this case, I believe that UAC would have raised hell with writing to C:\Windows and saved me this problem.

[johnnyboy]

From a different angle, I just got a notice from KAV that there was an infected file in C:\Windows. A trojan. When did it appear? No idea, guess a new set of signatures found it. The date on the file was the current date/time so that was no help.
Now, since I have no real idea how long this has been present, I get to decide if I believe the system is compromised. If I decide it is not trustworthy I get to reinstall from scratch because I do not know if my system images are also compromised.

In this case, I believe that UAC would have raised hell with writing to C:\Windows and saved me this problem.

Wouldn't count on it - pretty sure it wont take long before they work out a way to get around UAC - most other features have been hacked/cracked (activation, getting Aero on home edition, etc) already so dont figure UAC will last that long either.

[AoXoMoXoA]

With what I have read here as well as elsewhere, and looking forward towards my next system, leads me to one very important question:

Will there ever be a Media Center version for Mac? 

[marko]

thread ressurection time...

A month or so ago, I tried out Vista for real on my newly built system. No more hiding out in virtual pc land...

It was a nightmare. Everything took way too long to figure out. I had to resort to searching the web for a few hours to discover where on earth Creative had hidden the "enable digital I/O" setting in their driver. .ini files were being saved in a "virtual store" folder, so upon reboot, programs that needed them couldn't find them and old versions that still existed in their program files folders were being used instead...
It seemed that with almost every second mouse click that "A program needs your permission" dialogue was popping up...
Agnitum still haven't got their act together with a Vista compatible firewall solution (their security suite (haha) has just entered public beta testing)...
I still remember moving from windows 98se to XP on a PIII 677MHz, 512 MB of RAM and a TNT2 32MB graphics card and the difference was just "WOW" from the first boot. I could not believe that simply changing the OS could produce such a dramatic improvement. It was like I'd got a whole new PC. It didn't crash (well, at least not after nVidia and VIA sorted out the infinite loop BSOD problem) and everything was just sooo much more responsive. All the win2k purists at the time were extremely dismissive of what was just win2k with eye candy, but I was hooked. All in all, my first foray into the Vista OS was a thoroughly horrible experience that had me diving for my XP system image file within 7 days.

I'm back on Vista as of this weekend and the first thing I did was to disable UAC and so far, the ride has been a whole lot smoother, and I would seem to have gotten the better of my 'overscan' problem on our luverly new Bravia TV, which is nice. Very nice

As I see no benefit to having UAC turned on, and bucketloads of peace (ignorant or otherwise) by having it turned off, turned off it shall remain. I got this far without it, I never found myself in a situation where I wished the OS had stepped in and prevented that from happening, so, good theory but piss-poor implementation, there aren't even any training options for the thing, for software or the end-user...

-marko.

[Doof]

The first time I tried Vista I was so annoyed with UAC that I just shut it off. This time around I decided to set my account up as a standard user account, and also created a password-protected admin account, and left UAC on. I do everything from my standard user account. When something I do requires admin priveledges, I get prompted for a password. The funny thing is, I get prompted less this way then I do logged in to an admin account. And I get the added bonus of being informed when something tries something it shouldn't without my consent. It really isn't nearly as annoying this way, and I believe it was pretty much how Microsoft intended it to be used. At least I hope so, because using UAC while logged in as an admin is just silly.

[rjm]

I went into Vista with an open mind and decided to try the default settings.

After about a week I got so angry with UAC I turned it off. I think the straw that broke my back was that it would not let me run IPCONFIG.

With UAC turned off I am completely satisifed with Vista and consider it an improvement over XP.

On my son's computer, I have left UAC turned on and it does not seem to bother him. So I think UAC is bad for geeks and probably ok for everybody else.

[robydago]

So I think UAC is bad for geeks and probably ok for everybody else.

Well, geeks could add\remove specific rights to user accounts so that a non admin user can run ipconfig for example

[DarkPenguin]

*chomp*
This time around I decided to set my account up as a standard user account, and also created a password-protected admin account, and left UAC on.
*chomp*

It is my understanding that this is how UAC should be run.  It is unfortunate that Mr Softie didn't set up the install to automagically do that.

[Doof]

It is unfortunate that Mr Softie didn't set up the install to automagically do that.

Couldn't agree more. It would have saved a lot of complaining from the average user who doesn't understand what it's there for, how to use it correctly, or how to shut it off. I may actually go back to running everything under an admin account, but it really isn't bothering me the way I'm using it now. It also makes it easy for me to do admin-level stuff on my fiancee's account without having to let her have admin access as well.