Vista

After using Windows XP for five years, I was comfortable to say the least. I wasn’t gung ho about trying a new operating system, however my recent purchase of a laptop gave me no choice: Windows Vista Home Premium was pre-installed. Remember the release of XP? The differences between XP, WindowsME/98 were huge. Networking, security, (or, so we all thought), and user accounts. Well, Vista, with it’s very, and I’m going to use a non-technical term, pretty interface, is night compared to XP’s day.

I will get into the graphical aspects of Vista in later posts. First and foremost I want to mention what I have deemed the most annoying new “security measure”-User Account Control, or UAC. Example: You want to install a new program you have downloaded. You double click the icon and Vista pauses slightly. Then a window pops up asking you if you are sure you want to perform the task. I would love to take a screen shot, however once the UAC is activated everything on your desktop disappears and you are left unable to click on anything except the continue or cancel buttons on the popup. Annoying? Yes. Although it is designed to prevent unauthorized changes to your computer, I think this is over-kill. The UAC is on by default-even under the administrator account, but, fear not- you can turn it off.

1. Go to Control Panel.
2. Click User Accounts.
3. Click “Turn User Account Control on or off.”
4. When the UAC pops up asking if you want to proceed, click continue.
5. Untick “Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer.”
6. Reboot.

Once the computer is rebooted-no more annoying pop ups asking if you’re sure you want to perform a certain task. If I didn’t want to do something, I wouldn’t have clicked the icon, now would I?