I’ve been trying out Windows 7 (build 6801) for a little while now, and I figured I would share some thoughts I’ve had:
- Holy shit! I could possibly live with UAC in Windows 7! [*see rant on UAC at the end]
- Most of the applications I’ve tried so far work okay. iTunes for instance, works fine for playing music and the bonjour service works as well. If I plug my iPhone in though, I’m asked to reinstall iTunes. Still; it’s very early for Windows 7 and I believe this is more than early Vista testers could have said with iTunes.
- Under 7, plugging in my printer is easy! It automatically downloads and installs the driver (and quickly, too). In Vista I have to go to the HP website and install it myself.
- The Windows Experience Index has been uncapped from 5.9 (see picture below).
As I spend more time with it, I’m sure I’ll think of more things to write about. But, as some will know, this early build doesn’t even have the features that Microsoft showed off last week (like the new taskbar). That’ll probably come along with Beta 1. EDIT: If you follow the instructions on this page, you can enable the new taskbar in build 6801.
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My rant at UAC: Pretty much the first thing I do in Vista is disable UAC; (don’t tell me that this is a bad idea; I haven’t gotton any viruses or other shiz because of my decision.) Frankly, I don’t see the point in UAC as it is in Vista – who is it for? people like myself are annoyed by it and many others just click yes because they don’t understand what it’s asking!
At least Microsoft understood that UAC is too annoying in Vista and they’ve toned it down in 7. Finally I can have UAC enabled and see all user’s processes in task manager without being prompted by UAC!
The only times that I’ve seen UAC in Windows 7 is when I’ve tried to install an application. Synergy, something which I use often, has to be run as Administrator and still, two years after Vista, there is no way to stop the prompt from appearing each and every time I run it.
So, even though UAC is better in Windows 7, if I were to be using it as a primary machine, I think I’d eventually turn UAC off.
Josh Anderson's Blog 
UAC can be run with out prompts what so ever if you user is Administrator.
Go to Local Security Policy->Local Policies->Security Options
Then go to the bottom and look at all the UAC (User Account Control) mods you can do.
Go to User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval mode. Set it to Elevate without prompt.
For standard users i leave it to Prompt for credetials. I think you can even prompt it for a password if you want. (like linux)
I used to be like you and disable the UAC, until a co-worker showed this to me. You do however still need to set certain programs to run in Administrator mode so they will function correctly. However, it is not hard to figure out which ones they are. In theory this should be more secure, then disabling.
Hope this helps!
Thanks. I’ll consider doing that the next time I reinstall Vista (turning UAC back on has ramifications for apps installed without UAC on as I’ve found out in the past).
I suppose it just makes it a bit more like Windows 7 is at the moment. Though, does it still prompt for apps that you have to set to run as administrator? It’d be cool if it didn’t.
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