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Benefits of Vista's User Access Control?
Abtin Forouzandeh asks: "Having used Vista for a few months, something keeps nagging me about the user account control. For the UAC to be useful, the user needs to have a fair amount of knowledge about: what the UAC is; what application it is blocking; the consequences of blocking the action; and an alternate approach if the blocked action did something useful. Anyone who has ever worked with end-users can tell you that they are generally disinterested in learning anything about computer usage beyond how to use word and make a spreadsheet. Frankly, even as a highly technical user, I nearly always approve the UAC dialog, even if I don't know the consequences. Since users lack knowledge, and Vista keeps asking esoteric/ambiguous questions, then users will always approve UAC dialogs. Since the UAC so clearly fails in its goal of making computing more secure, and substantially increases complexity, why is it common wisdom that turning off UAC is 'not recommended'? For 99% of users, is there any true downside? Has the community come up with ways to make UAC useful?"
The benefits? You have to ask? Pssh, it's simple:
/.ers could smugly mock Microsoft users by making "Blue Screen of Death" jokes. When Windows XP came out, we kept making these jokes, but as time went on, they got less and less funny due in no small part to the fact that the BSoD has become a less frequent part of the Windows experience. Needless to say, this sucks for those of us who use OS X or Linux! What are we gonna rag on?
With Windows 98 and, to a lesser extent, 2000, we
Well, then Microsoft went and did a big favor to the alternative OS community: UAC. Now, we can all get a big ol' chuckle (and "+5 Funny" mod points) out of saying, "Cancel or Allow?" in any thread whatsoever. It doesn't even have to be a thread about Vista or Microsoft. Apple even made a commercial about it! It's great. It's like Microsoft declared free karma Christmas!
"Mod me +5 Funny: Cancel or Allow?"!
And that's the benefit of UAC.
What was in that large boxes with marking "UAC" in game "DOOM 1".
Looks like it was Vista...