"Adam Albright" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 08:29:25 -0800, "Kerry Brown"
*a*m wrote:

If after the computer is setup you are constantly seeing UAC prompts you
are
doing something wrong. I hardly ever see a UAC prompt.

That's way too broad a generalization. I'm hardly a casual user. I
went against typical "sage" advice and did a install in place as
opposed to a clean install because I got nearly 2 TB worth of stuff. A
nightmare to reinstall and reconfigure obviously. So I gambled (after
making so I had current backup) and it worked, ie no troubles
transferring applications, settings and data files from XP to Vista
with a couple minor hickups.

However once Vista was up and running it drove me crazy. Every couple
minutes it would pop up some moronic UAC window, gray my screen, nag,
nag, nag. If Windows did what it said, mirror my settings and in
effect save my system and only overlayed Vista then is already knows
or should know much of the stuff it keeps nagging about.

What's worse of course if if your move files around a lot, and I do,
it shouldn't nag, nag, nag, that in effect the user that has
administrative rights which has already done the same task repeatedly,
ie move files from Drive E Folder A, to Drive F Folder B needs again,
over and over Ad nauseam to get permission from his operating system,
click yes I want to do this time and time again until you are
literally ready to toss your monitor out the nearest window. That is
what I would call poor design and something no power user would ever
put up with for more than a few minutes which is why many people, even
MVP's turn UAC off.

While getting at financial information and identity theft is the goal of
some malware it is not the goal of most current malware. Most current
malware has the goal of extortion (e.g. spysherrif) or the goal of taking
control of your computer to use it as a zombie. The extortion malware is
very obvious when you get it. The trojans that take over your computer for
use as a zombie are not. The fact that many hundreds of thousands of
computers are available for sale as part of a botnet attests to the fact
that you cannot secure XP (or any OS) if you run as an administrator. I
see
many computers that have up to date antivirus and antispyware software
that
are compromised in this fashion. UAC (or running XP as a standard user)
would have stopped these infections. Turning off UAC may relieve some
short
term pain but it won't cure the disease and may have the opposite effect
of
helping to spread the disease.

I think a lot of people would call Windows the biggest and most
pervasive virus to ever infect a computer. giggle

I think most knowledgeable people if being totally honest would admit
no version of Windows is secure or can be made totally secure. So no
matter how much Windows gets "improved" it is really just patches on
top of previous patches.

The bottom line is Microsoft is stuck. It knows better then anybody
the real solution is to start over. From scratch. It won't and can't
really because to do that would blow the world's biggest installed
user base that demands that each new version of Windows be more or
less backward compatible with what hardware and software that ran on
earlier versions of Windows. The old catch 22.

Sure, I have no doubt if Microsoft really wanted to they could deliver
on a very robost Windows or something called something else. To do
that would mean they would have to be willing to give up a sizable
chuck of their users and obviously they don't want to do that and the
irony is way too many users don't want a total new and completely
different OS either because they would have to dump a lot of their
current hardware and software. If they did that, unlikely they would
pick any Microsoft OS as their OS of first choice.




If you have that many programs that cause a UAC prompt you should have stuck
with XP until there were Vista compatible versions of them. I move files
around my network all the time and never see a UAC prompt because of moving
files. You may have to change your habits as to where you store your files
but simply moving files around doesn't cause a UAC prompt. You say no
version of Windows can be made secure. I'd extend that to say that no OS can
be made secure. The better ones at security all use some method to stop
normal users from changing system wide settings and changing system files.
I'll make another broad generalization and say that most Vista users who
have considerable experience with OS' than Windows leave UAC on. It's mostly
the long time Windows users and programmers who haven't used other OS' who
are whining the loudest about UAC.

--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca