Thomas Lee has been a Windows beta tester for, oh, a gazillion years. His take on User Account Control (formerly User Account Protection, or UAP) is typical of longtime Windows users:
There are some other things about [build] 5365 I hate – particularly UAP. The concept of forcing users to run with relatively low privaleges is a great one. But the implementation is Vista is just plain lame. As I’m setting up the system, the entire screen goes black for 2-3 seconds (a visual sensation similar to what we saw when XP blue-screened) then a silly dialog box pops up – I click Accept – the screen goes black for another 2-3 seconds, and I can carry on. It’s very, very annoying – sufficiently so that I’m going to just log on with admin privaleges. It’s easier and far less intrusive. Sadly, while I like the concept, MS has made a poor job of the implementation. Of course, mileage may vary on this – but I doubt many IT Pros will even come close to liking this implementation. We’ll see.
I’ve published some screen shots of the latest UAC implementation at ZDNet. More to follow.
Ed Bott 
I’ve given up with UAC – I’ve used Msconfig to remove it. Life is better. As I say on my blog, I like the concept – it’s the implementation I hate. I can not see this being popular for any user, experienced or otherwise.
Hi Ed,
Having been on the Vista beta since October I have seen a few implementations of UAP. I totally agree with Thomas. I am a big supporter of LUA and think that UAP is a fantastic feature, however it’s implementation at this point could use some major improvements.
Do I mind clicking OK when I am about to make a system change? No. Do I like to see my computer convulse and flash the monitor on and off? No. Do I hope this is a beta bug and will be fixed in a future build? Yes.
Great feature, but the implementation needs some tweaking 🙂
I think the dialog wording is pretty good but it won’t matter if users frequently get these messages in the first few days they own the PC. By then everyone in the house will know that “the computer asks you that stuff all the time” and click OK. Game over.
I’m also not sure what information a user has to accurately answer many of these questions. It reminds me of a tame version of those classic firewall riddles: “svchost.exe is trying to send a message to 192.168.100.3 on port 1251, do you want to allow it?”
It doesn’t help that several major vendors still do not sign their executable files. Yes, I’m talking to you, Sun and Google.
Dave, if you’re an admin, then yes, the dialog will barely be a speed bump. But if you’re a standard user it most certainly will prevent you from installing Kazaa or something equally terrible even after Dad told you specifically that you can’t do that.
We can debate over whether I have unrealistic expectations for UAP, but I can definitely say that you have unrealistic expectations of my kids. 🙂
If the kids have limited accounts and don’t know the admin password, that might work. Unfortunately there still seems to be a lot of software out there that doesn’t work on limited accounts. Also, the cynical side of me wonders whether vendors will have the discipline to set them up that way and take the hit on support calls (“Why is it asking me this? Why can’t I run this program?”) versus making everyone admin and reaping the profit from spyware cleanup products.
That’s certainly true with XP, where running under a limited (standard user) account is nearly impossible. This situation is dramatically improved with Vista. I’ve been using a limited account with Vista and the experience is not bad at all. Also, Vista will create all accounts after the initial admin account as standard accounts, which should help.
I been testing Vista beta builds since beta 1, and the UAP has kept me from using them full-time. Constant popups are a death by a thousand cuts. I’ve had good success running as limited user on XP, using Aaron Margosis’s “make me admin” batch files (they are great!) when needed. (I also tend to avoid software that won’t run as limited, occasionally granting access write access to the program’s install folder as a last resort)
For Vista all I want is the system to let me easily unlock admin priv for a few minutes, complete my admin tasks, and then revert back to limited.
On XP limited accounts basically cannot be configured by the casual user–the process is far too complicated. To have any better results with Vista, UAP must usable by mom and dad. And my parents don’t really have any basis for evaluating the flood UAP of dialogs. MS might do better by offering an icon to elevate priv which users can click when they want to do admin tasks. Otherwise the system should remain as a limited user. Admin-only icons, menu selections, etc can be “grayed out” until the user specifically elevates priv. That way the user states their preference in advance, rather than suffer through 5 dialog windows after unwittingly clicking the wrong icon.
D