We've all seen the mac commercials about how annoying UAC in Windows Vista is. Although it's way overdone, it's an effective commercial, because it's true... for the most part. The PC says: "I could turn him off, but then he wouldn't give me any warnings at all, and that would defeat the purpose." Well, that is the part that isn't really true. Sadly, the most obvious setting is a simple checkbox that lets you choose to disable UAC completely. However, if you are in the right place, you can customize UAC quite a bit. You can turn off the mostly pointless confirmation dialogs, but you can leave in the useful ones (for example, the ones that ask you to cancel or allow programs that launch themselves) And here's how: 1. Press Windows Key (or open the start menu). 2. Type "Local Security Policy" 3. Press Enter or click on Local Security Policy from the list 4. In the left pane, choose: "Local Policies" 5. In the left pane, choose: "Security Options" 6. In the right pane, scroll down until you find all the "User Account Control: ..." items. 7. Review each one, choose what you think is best for you. Each option has an "Explain" tab which does a pretty good job of telling you what each setting does. Enjoy.
I should point out that for most users here, the important setting to change is: "User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode" Set this option to "Elevate without prompting". This means that anyone running an administrator account will not have to pointlessly click "continue" (with no password prompt or anything) when they try to access certain configuration options. Standard users will still have to provide admin password. If you have multiple users using 1 administrator account (not really recommended), then set the option to "Prompt for credentials". That way the user will have to have your password, rather than just having to click continue. This setting can be useful if you have kids or others in your house that sit down at your computer after you have already logged in.
So what's the skinny on Vista, anyway? Is it a big improvement over XP? Or just another annoying thing that's going to render half my games and shit unworkable on the sad day I eventually have to switch over. (ie- new computer)
Well, I got Business Edition free from my university. Otherwise I wouldn't have gotten it. It has some nice aspects and some downsides. First downside is poor driver availability. Most stuff has vista drives, but often it is in beta form, or at best a very new version. The OS is new enough that the drivers aren't "fully baked". This won't likely be an issue with any new PC you buy. You may have some issues with printers, scanners, etc. In addition, the driver issue will go away as vendors catch up and Vista becomes more prevalent. I don't see this is a flaw in the OS, just something that is natural whenever there is a big change. So far none of my apps have failed to work in Vista. I admit I haven't tried to use anything really old though. UltraMon still works but a few features don't work. New version of UltraMon for vista is underway though. If you don't have a decent video card, you may not enjoy Vista's Aero interface. My ATI Radeon X800XL 256MB has no problems whatsoever, and the interface works smoothly without any hiccups. I am using a pretty-crappy AMD Athlon 64 2800+ (1.8GHz) with 1GB of DDR400 memory in single channel (socket 754 FTL). Despite a pretty slow processor, the OS performs fine even using dual monitors (1650x1050 & 1280x1024). I also had it installed on a machine with a 1.8GHz athlon xp, 1gb of ram, and an ATI 9600XT 128MB. It worked ok but some slowdowns were noticable now and then. Seems that the processor and ram requirements aren't that different from XP, just the graphics. Another bonus of the new interface is that it is rendered in the same way that your games are. This means that games minimize and maximize MUCH easier. Also, having a menu overlap with your game (accidentally pressing windows key for example) does not bring your machine to a grinding halt for a minute as it switches back and forth between rendering modes over and over. One downside to multiple monitor users: Multiple monitors only work with Aero interface enabled if they are all driven by the same driver. If you have only 2 monitors from 1 card, you are fine. However, if you are using multiple brands of video cards in order to get many monitors, you are probably out of luck. This probably isn't an issue for 99.99% of users though. You can still use multiple types of video cards, provided they use the same drivers. This means that generally cards that all share the same brand will work together. Another issue is a silly-ass install process that can fuck up when you are using IDE and SATA drives together. If you designate a SATA drive for the install, the install will put some key boot files on the IDE drive... so your system will not boot without the install DVD. Disconnect all the drives besides the one you are installing to, and this is no issue. After the install is complete, reconnect them and everything is fine. The new search system, the backup options, the security, the new UI, the GREATLY improved start menu, and the much better handling of rendering 2D and 3D elements simultaneously are very nice advancements, but really aren't enough to justify upgrading for full price, at least not this early in the game. Really I would NOT recommend that anyone buy Vista. Don't shy away from getting a new pc that has Vista on it though. Most problems people have are when people upgrade an existing system to Vista. A few months down the line, most all of the issues will be ironed out, and driver support won't be an issue anymore. The only people who should upgrade to Vista now, are people who own directx10 compatible video cards and are going to get some of the early directx10 games, like Crysis for example.
I download the Vista trial that Microsoft was offering and plan on using it till it expires in June, but so far, I'm wholly unimpressed by it. My system runs slower, I get annoyed by the UCP thing (though I'll try what you just said Pow), so many programs either don't run or don't run correctly. I haven't seen any upside to the OS yet whatsoever, other than my system is now NTFS. That itself isn't anything new, but I couldn't have NTFS under XP with my Acer Laptop, because, for some reason, they format it FAT32 pre-installed, and it's the whole reason I installed Vista to begin with, for NTFS. But I certainly won't be buying Vista, unless, of course, it comes with my next PC or Laptop purchase.
If you are rocking old hardware and a lot of old programs... upgrading would be very ill advised. As I see it, it is an improvement. But only on new enough hardware. And it isn't enough of an improvement to justify buying (unless, as I said you have some dx10 games coming and you have a dx10 card). However, overall it IS a better OS and I wouldn't have any qualms about having people getting it on new machines. One thing I forgot to the mention, something that is a big deal for laptops, is that the power saving features on it are vastly superior to XP. If anyone remembers, we had the same type of debates and questions about XP. ME had sucked so people who were still using 98 were often saying "fuck XP, its slower and doesn't work with all my stuff!". After a year though, there was no question that XP was better. We'll see the same thing with Vista.
Yea, but there's no excitement over Vista either. And I really don't see anything in it that is vastly superior to XP. Each incarnation of Windows has offered some compelling reason to upgrade, but I don't see that with Vista. Which is why the launch of it was so ho-hum and Microsoft has had to harshly revise downward projections of sales of it. No one was standing in line to purchase this OS, and with good reason. At this point, that report I had read earlier about this being the last major release of an OS by Microsoft looks to be more and more likely.
Umm there is a lot of great enchancements to Vista, if you own a new PC. If you don't, it's not worth it at all. It is a lot more geared towards being a gaming platform than XP, IMO. But if you have a built-in video card, less than 2.0ghz (rated) processor and less than 1 or 2gb of Ram, you're pretty much wasting your time. But, no, the same thing was said about XP Xerafin. There was no excitement until a year after it was released and it was realized how much more stable it was than 98 or god forbid ME. I don't remember anyone being excited about an O/S from MS in many years, except 95 when it first came out. I will buy and upgrade to Vista when I build my new PC, but no reason to do so beforehand. The major reason I'll upgrade to Vista when I build my new PC, is so I don't have to format my HD multiple times in one year. Also, when Dx10 games come out, I'll want to play them with Dx10 extensions, not be stuck in XP without them.
I'm not much of a gamer anymore, which is why I don't care, I guess. I'd be happier if Apple released its OS for PC users. And at this point, I don't understand why they don't. They've bridged the architecture with the switch to Intel processors...
Because they can't handle it. They want to keep the Mac users buying their overpriced machines. Not only that they don't want to deal with the endless configurability of a PC. There are thousands and thousands of different PCs out there, but with a Mac they only have to worry about the few configs that they have put out themselves. I'd like to see them release a directly competing OS too though. Might actually lead to some price drops on Windows copies.
Speaking of installing and running Vista on low-end -- and I do mean LOW end -- machines... It can be done. I installed a copy of the RC1 build on a machine with a 2.0Ghz Intel chip, only 512Mb of RAM and a 128Mb nVidia GeForce MX440. I didn't get Aero, of course, but the OS ran just as smoothly as XP Pro SP2.
Well, that ball is in the corner of the driver makers, obviously. Nobody says that an OS must have thousands of drivers built in
There's more to compatibility than just drivers. You are also taking on a much more difficult group to provide help and support for.
This "Local Security Policies" business apparently doesn't exist on my Machine. I have Windows Vista Home Premium. EDIT: In fact, "secpol.msc" apparently doesn't exist!
One thing they need to do is to make UAC user-definable in a user-friendly way. My suggestion has always been for that to be implemented in a fashion similar to the Security Levels structure in IE, with a few default schemes and then an Advanced submenu.
That's true. It needs to be easier to configure what you get confirmations about and what you don't. There is a fairly decent level of customization but it isn't obvious where the settings are located. Also, another thing to note is that UAC isn't really annoying anymore. When you first install Vista (your first impression) it is a scourge, because you are configuring and installing everything. So you get the UAC confirmation dialogs all the time because of all the settings changes and installations you are doing. However, after you have had the OS for a couple weeks and you are back to normal use, you almost never have to deal with UAC.
