Finally went 7

Honestly, Microsoft is welcome to dictate whatever it likes. If the consumer stops buying new OS's, Microsoft can't really do anything. They can stop supporting the older ones, but that's not going to stop people from using them. If that sort of thing worked, we'd all throw away our perfectly good vehicles every single year when the new model came out.

 

Microsoft doesn't need to worry about that. They control the OEM market. The only way that consumers will stop buying their upgraded OSes is if they don't buy new computers, ever again.

 

True. Having a monopoly does make them impossible to contest.

 

But they don't have a monopoly, unless you consider it a monopoly by choice of the competition.

Apple could choose to let their OS install on different machines and take marketshare form them. It is their decision, and their decision alone to allow Microsoft to have so much control.

There are no other viable choices out there for the masses. GNU/Linux isn't friendly enough yet, and its ecosystem is unstable. Chrome OS doesn't have any viable software ecosystem to speak of. OS X is tied to hardware. With Windows you get many choices. The average consumer sees the advantage of having choice in hardware and cost.

 

UAC is useless if the only thing it does is train the user to just click accept every time it pops up asking if you really did mean to click on the thing that you really did just click on. Once the user is trained to allow everything that pops up, because everything that pops up is something that the user wanted to do, then malicious software doesn't get slowed at all by it since it's second nature to just accept the virus into your hard drive as soon as it asks for permission to come on board. After all, you do it without even thinking about it. I've experienced this first hand.

UAC will also stop programs from installing, even when you do "allow" it. It will stop other programs from performing properly. I had one program that would let you work all day on your project, but if UAC was enabled you couldn't save anything. It just wouldn't let you, 4 hours of working on a project down the drain. I've experienced this first hand. This was with Vista, maybe Windows 7 is more refined, but it's still advised on some program installs to disable it before you install the software.

When UAC pops up it's alert to ask for permission it will kick your calibrated screen profile off. It has something to do with the dimmed alert screen. If you rely on that screen calibration for accurate colors this makes UAC a very big nuisance or even destructive to your work depending on how you view it. Of course, it doesn't tell you that it's kicking your screen calibration off, it just does it without you knowing it. I've experienced this first hand.

That's it for my rant. You have the option to turn UAC off, so it's not something that I'd skip buying an OS over. I just prefer to have it turned off or as close to it as you can get. If you like UAC and it works for you then that's great. My original point was that Vista wasn't nearly as bad an OS that people and the media made it out to be. Turning off UAC was a big part of that IMHO. There were far more things about Vista that I liked than I didn't like.

 

You can lead a horse to water...

If a user learns just to click through UAC, then they will learn to just enter passwords as well for other OSes. At that point, it is sheer user stupidity that is the problem and you can't program stupid out of users.

 

I prefer my access controls to be like firewalls. Turn it on for everything so if I'm actively installing something I have to agree, but let me whitelist things which will go through automatically. I have yet to see any that do that.

 

If you can't tell the difference between a reflex reaction of clicking "Continue" and typing in an actual user password then I guess you're the horse in this situation.

Regards.

 

You know, maybe it is early in the morning and I misunderstood, but that kind of felt like an insult directed towards me and I don't appreciate it.

The phrase means:

You can teach someone to be secure with UAC or elevation prompts, but you can't force them to actually pay attention to what they are doing.

Notice that I may have used strong language in saying some users are stupid, but I in no way directed it your way by saying 'you'. Indeed, I see it the same as if people took their gas tank for granted and decided to stop reading the levels from their gauge. It is their own stupid fault for when they run out of gas in those circumstances. There needs to be user accountability when computing (or drivng a car if you prefer that analogy). You can't code an OS to force users to make smart decisions or pay attention.

If you really think that clicking ok on an elevation prompt is any different than typing in a password, you are sadly mistaken. It is not different, and no OS is terribly verbose about the purpose, If anything, Windows is MORE verbose than OS X and GNU/Linux on the issue. Not that it matters, if they can't be bothered to read UAC prompts, they won't read password prompts either.

Try using GNU/Linux for a few months. It will get to the point that entering a password is a knee-jerk reaction, just like click through a UAC prompt. The only difference is a keyboard typed phrase vs. a mouse click.rolleyes

Now I won't stoop to your level and throw an insult your way, but I will tell you that if you can't tell there is no difference, it is because you haven't used anything but Windows for any real amount of time to know.

 

Maybe I should have said "You know, maybe it is very late evening and I misunderstood, but that kind of felt like an insult directed towards me and I don't appreciate it." Whatever, it's just an opinion and I took it wrong. I'm sorry for redirecting it towards you.

But I digress, we're getting very far off topic here.