Hey Doug, I don’t want to pick on you but this…
There are a few things about Vista that most “power user” types change, and so have I. I have the UAC stuff disabled, since I’m installing and configuring so much software right now that it just feels in the way.
Doug Mahugh is a technical evangelist for Office 2007, and this is from his blog. He’s probably one among many Microsoft folk disabling UAC – though I hope otherwise – but it’s a big mistake.
What’s the biggest problem with Windows right now? Security, right. And what’s the centrepiece of Vista’s security solution? UAC, right. So it strikes me that anyone evangelising Microsoft software should be evangelising UAC as well.
There’s more. Consider Outlook, for a long time a decent Exchange client, but a poor standalone email client and PIM (Personal Information Manager). One of the reasons is that everyone at Microsoft uses Exchange. So they didn’t suffer the problems of standalone Outlook, so they didn’t beat up the product team about it, so the problems went unfixed.
More than anyone, Microsoft folk need to use UAC and ensure that it works right.
Bottom line: don’t disable UAC.
This is really cool in theory, but since Vista is still in it´s RC2 (and I have installed RC1) there are lots of applications that doesn´t really “LIKE” UAC.
And guess who doesn´t work with UAC? Oracle Client. And since I have to develop in .Net for Oracle DataBase Backends I can´t have UAC turned on. I tried every single piece of advice in the web to keep it on, but ultimately the only thing that allowed Oracle to work was disable UAC.
But I do agree with you that UAC shouldn´t be disabled unless you really need it. Disabling it should be your last resource.
Bernardo Heynemann
> But I do agree with you that UAC shouldn´t be disabled unless you really need it.
> Disabling it should be your last resource.
That’s the exact point – particularly if you work for Microsoft.
It’s a challenge to the likes of Oracle too. If Oracle says, “Just disable UAC”, and people do, then UAC has failed.