Re: What are Vista's problems.. really?

"ed" <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> stated in post
80d59c69-b847-4b47-8702-0cd9b43963b8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx on 11/4/08
9:58 AM:

....
and you've said that you largely teach beginners.  who by definition, have
little experience.  again, validating my statements.  :P

Beginners can have a lot of experience with the system they are using...

but, again, you are leaving the topic behind to talk about people.  The
topic, if you recall, is *Vista*, not your views of people.

i made no comment about my views of people- i pointed out the problems
have with uac are largely only relevant when a user is starting to use
vista- a lot of the customizations will cause uac prompts.  after
those initial nagging prompts, it's not much of an issue.

Not interested in your denials.

Pretty much your "evidence" so far is you say so and your experience should
count over mine because you have more experience with Vista and more than my
students because you *assume* you have more experience and with co-workers
because... um... why was that again?  :)

that is one whacked sentence... :P

So now that you are done belittling me you are belittling a poor, innocent
sentence who has never done *anything* to you! :)

but yes, i have more experience (i've been using vista pretty much daily since
the general consumer release)and you should "count" more than your admittedly
limited experience, and the experience of your group of beginner students, as
i know when uac is an issue, and it's primarily an issue when setting up the
machine.

You again went back to comparing two groups:

Group 1:
* Me, with admitted limited experience
* My beginning students

Group 2:
* You

That is a false split, though. Remember, Group 1 consists of:

* Me, with admitted limited experience
* My beginning students
* My experience students
* My co-workers in a college Computer Science division
* My co-workers in an IT department

With each of those groups I have had both informal and formal discussions on
Vista (well, other than with myself - alone. I rarely have formal
discussions with myself!)

So I can claim my pool of resources is larger than the single pool of you
that you have presented.

But really, we are still making appeals to authority and not looking at
Vista itself (perhaps in comparison to other OSs)! That is what we should
be doing - who simply says what about Vista is not as direct and not as
powerful. That is what I was trying to get you to do - not focus on putting
down or discounting of other's experience's but to focus on the topic
itself. I hope you can do that.

I just did a Google search for: Vista UAC.

What do you think I found? Easy... all sorts of comments about how annoying
it is. From the first 10 hits:

<http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/06/dont_shut_off_v.h
tml>
-----
One of the most annoying things about Microsoft Windows Vista
is User Account Control and all the warnings it pops up to
ask if you just did something you really wanted to do. Like,
either (a) it wasn't you who pressed the Enter key, but the
ghost of your grandfather standing at your shoulder, or (b)
you really are too stupid to be trusted to know you want to
install a program or open an attachment. The temptation is
strong to turn off UAC warnings by disabling the controls,
but that causes more problems, like making it even more
difficult to do some things in Vista.
-----

<http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jh
tml?articleID=207801611>
-----
"Boop." Windows needs your permission to continue.

Is there any feature of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Windows Vista
more universally reviled than the User Account Control, or
UAC for short? It's a necessary evil at best, and a hideous
inconvenience at worst.
-----

<http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080411-vistas-uac-security-prompt-wa
s-designed-to-annoy-you.html>
-----
User Account Control is easily one of the most hated features
of Windows Vista, according to readers. The seemingly endless
stream of UAC pop-ups, asking you to confirm this action or
that action, just get in the way (and aren't particularly
zippy, given the screen redraw). Others don't mind UAC, but
there's no doubt it's a controversial "feature" of the OS.

At the RSA 2008 confab in San Francisco, Microsoft admitted
that UAC was designed, in fact, to annoy. Microsoft's David
Cross came out and said so: "The reason we put UAC into the
platform was to annoy users. I'm serious," said Cross.
-----

<http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2006/09/20/763275.aspx>
-----
In general, UAC has turned out pretty well. It was pretty
intrusive in early builds, prompting often and sometimes
capturing focus at the wrong time. For the vast majority of
users, UAC will offer a valuable level of security protection
that will protect against malware: it simply won't have the
rights to perform invasive actions like installing device
drivers or services.
-----

Ok, I included that last one for balance... but most of the comments about
UAC are that it is an annoyance, at best. It was designed to be an
annoyance. As even you say, one must "configure" it to not be an annoyance.

Now let's look at what we know of Windows 7 in terms of UAC.

<http://www.nytimes.com/external/idg/2008/10/28/28idg-Microsoft-vows.html>
-----
Microsoft also will tweak the User Account Control feature
(UAC), which was new in Vista, so it will be less of an
inconvenience and work more efficiently for users, Sinofsky
said.
...
Sinofsky acknowledged that Microsoft "went a little too far
with UAC," but as a result the Windows client OS is now more
secure. In Windows 7, Microsoft will focus on the security
aspects of UAC but will ensure it is not an invasive feature
for users, he said.
-----

<http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&art
icleId=9118482&source=rss_topic17>
-----
Microsoft Corp.'s plans to change a controversial security
feature in Windows 7 are only cosmetic, nothing more than
"lipstick on UAC," a developer of enterprise rights
management tools said today.
-----

<http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2008/10/30/arspdc-windows-7s-
streamlined-uac>
-----
One feature of Vista that came under more criticism than most
was User Account Control. The feature, designed to make
Windows more secure by both limiting the rights of
Administrators and making it easier for regular Users to gain
Administrator rights only when necessary, was deemed to be
annoying and intrusive. As a result, some 10-15% of Vista
users turn it off.
...
With Windows 7, Microsoft has tried to tone down UAC to make
it less invasive while still affording the same protection.
Windows 7 contains a slider with four different UAC settings:
-----

<http://vista.blorge.com/2008/10/09/windows-7-uac-could-be-less-of-a-nag/>
-----
Microsoft says it¹s heard ³loud and clear² that Vista users
don¹t like the way the User Account Control system works. And
it¹s vowed to improve UAC in Windows 7 ­ but has defended the
principle of the system.

The comments come in a lengthy article on the official
Engineering Windows 7 blog. Writer Ben Fathi says the goal in
the new system is to refine UAC so that there are fewer but
clearer prompts, and users can have more control about what
type of prompt they see.
...
However, the company acknowledges that the sheer number of
prompts is still a problem, not just because of the
irritation, but because it reduces the impact of genuinely
important prompts such as when malware tries to change system
settings.

There¹s also a big problem with users getting into the habit
of simply clicking approval every time without reading the
prompt. Fathi concedes ³the dialogs in Vista aren¹t easy to
decipher and are often not memorable.² He points to company
testing which found only 13% of people could understand what
a particular UAC prompt means. However, a revised system for
Windows 7 performed far better, with 83% being able to
decipher the new messages, which are based on asking ³a
meaningful question².
-----

Hard to say that UAC is anything other than a "feature" in need of some
pretty serious improvements. Clearly even MS realizes this and is working
on that for Windows 7.

....
but do you know the details of the findings (what incompatibilities,
what sort of 'usability studies' (not something most it folks are
really going to be trained / good at, what sort of testing, etc)?

I do not know all of the details of the findings... though I do know that IE
7 did not work with the online content / communication system, though I
think that has now been cleared up (if there are significant outstanding
issues I have not run into them that I can think of off hand).  There was
also an issue with iTunes, but that was resolved long ago.  I also know that
there was a concern with the portables - I think tied to battery life but I
am not certain (could have been driver related...).  Next time I am in the
office I will ask the folks there, if I remember.  :)

ok, so the testing apparently happened before the large scale consumer
release of vista (that's when the big itunes issues were (and you guys
run itunes on the college computers? really? for what? you
obviously can't sync to it, and it doesn't all that well using common
library (especially on windows))), and the issues were either resolved
or maybe even non issues, but the decision was made to skip it based
on that? haha- there's plenty of legit reasons to skip vista, but
those are funny. :D

Again, here you are mocking the decisions of others and not talking about
the decisions themselves. Yes, people use iTunes, even in college classes
(heck, it is one of the programs I will be teaching this year). My college
does both community education and degree oriented education. Nothing wrong
with that.



--
Is Swiss cheese made out of hole milk?

.

Relevant Pages

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