XP vs Vista

[White Haven]

The problem with user prompting a la UAC and other solutions is that if you're prompted for authorization every time you try to do ANYTHING, after a while clicking 'allow' becomes automatic to the average user, and then the UAC becomes nothing but a false sense of security.

[Steel]

Please note that if you have a network at home, with other computers on XP, you do not really want to use Vista; network copies from XP to Vista and vice versa is incredibly slow due to a noted bug that will be fixed in SP1 which is NOT due for release until 2nd half 2008 IIRC.

Copying a 600Mb file from my file "server" which is an XP box to my Vista Business machine took something like 30 minutes. That's just unacceptable. It'd be faster for me to copy it to a USB drive and transfer it that way. I've tried most of the fixes including the related hotfix, but nothing's really worked except for the beta SP1 which makes me a bit pissed off honestly.

I've tried:
- Turning off Remote Differential Compression
- Applying the related hotfix
- Doublechecking everything else on the network

Also, before anybody goes "Oh you must have crappy computers/network, that's why", the two machines in question are a Q6600 with 2Gb RAM (Vista) and an old XP 3000+ with 1.5Gb RAM (XP) connected through a WRT54G router.

So yeah Your mileage may vary

Just as a random aside- I have seen cases where making yourself a couple of hotmail accounts and then dropping the file across MSN was about 2x as fast as using the network file transfer. Maybe give that a try if the standard stuff is being buggy?

[Stark]

The problem with user prompting a la UAC and other solutions is that if you're prompted for authorization every time you try to do ANYTHING, after a while clicking 'allow' becomes automatic to the average user, and then the UAC becomes nothing but a false sense of security.

Absolutely. It quickly becomes a useless window people click-through: they know there will be a popup when they run an install, so they don't bother READING it. It's convienient in that you don't have to constantly retype your password (which I think is daft) but the security-ignorant won't get much additional security from it in most situations.

[RThurmont]

One might well observe that the security ignorant are going to get pwned using Windows regardless, unless given limited user accounts (in which most of the apps they need won't work).

[Netko]

Depends on what you mean by most - Office 2007 works without needing UAC escalation, as well as Adobe's CS2 suite, etc. As well as any intranet based web solution which are very popular these days. And its going to be even better in time because developers finally have an incentive to do their apps properly as they should have been doing them since W2k. As new versions come on line there should be even fewer ordinary users who need admin powers (and thus UAC). UAC itself will also benefit from this since signing will become more commonplace, and UAC throws up a different screen depending on if the app is signed with a trusted certificate or not, so the tendency to just hit "allow" should in time be harder to acquire.

It still doesn't fix the home situation, but there you simply have to depend somewhat on the user not being brain-dead. Considering how annoying a lot of people consider even UAC I can't really think of a security measure that would give the stupid people pause and force them to read what its asking and on the other hand not be annoying in daily use.

[Stark]

I've actually found it's mostly pre-Vista software that has problems either with UAC or with it being deactivated. Everything made in the last six months seems to be fine.

And yeah, you can't help the willfully stupid. But your attempts to do so can irritate everyone else a lot more than UAC does.

[White Haven]

As a minor anecdote regarding Vista, I've got to relate something that is not at all Microsoft's fault, and yet is obnoxious as hell. Got a Vista laptop in the shop here, and the customer's printer as well; she couldn't get the print driver to install. So we start tinkering...and yes, there are theoretically Vista print drivers, but they don't seem to actually contain a working driver. After fucking with trying to get a driver extracted from their fifty meg mass of bullshit, and an hour and a half on the phone with three different support departments at Dell, they finally cough up the tidbit that it doesn't actually support Vista. Despite having published 'Vista' drivers on their site.

Not at all an idictment of Vista, since it's not Microsoft's fault, but I just needed to rant. And it was quasi-related.

[Beowulf]

You can't stop people from looking at the fluffy bunnies.