MaximumPC 2007 01

USER ACCOUNT CONTROL

GOOFINESS

While User Account Control will help

constrain malware, we’re not thrilled with

its actual implementation. For one thing,

it’s annoying. Some application install-

ers—hello iTunes —prompt you three times

for Administrator rights during the install

process. Whether this is Microsoft’s fault

or Apple’s, it shouldn’t work this way.

Furthermore, requesting Admin cre-

dentials with a simple Allow/Don’t Allow

prompt strikes us as a little insecure. On

most other OSes with similar permission

schemes, when you need to elevate an

application to Admin status, you need

to type in either your password or the

Admin password. Most users—think: your

mom—will quickly be trained to simply

click the Allow button whenever it pops

up. These are the people who desperately

need to be protected from spyware.

Then there are the incompatibil-

ity issues. Applications as common as

Punkbuster —a popular anti-cheat program

for online games—have problems run-

ning properly in Vista with UAC enabled.

When you connect to a game server in

a Punkbuster app under Vista, if the app

isn’t running as an Admin, the server will

kick you for running with Punkbuster dis-

abled. In order to play Punkbuster games,

you always have to run the game in ques-

tion as an administrator.

UPSELLING AN OS SUCKS

We don’t like upsells. We don’t want the

extended warranty, we don’t super-size our

order, and we sure as hell

don’t want three different

versions of Windows for con-

sumers. We only want one,

and we want it to offer all the

stuff we need.

By bundling features like

Media Center, domain con-

nectivity, and Aero Glass with

the higher-priced versions of

Windows, Microsoft is doing

nothing more than creating

extra revenue opportunities

for an already overpriced

product. Windows Vista Ultimate costs

$400 (Home Premium costs a mere $240).

There are lots of little differences, but the

main distinction is that Ultimate can con-

nect to a Windows Domain and Home

Premium can’t. Sure, Ultimate is going

to come with ephemeral “Vista Ultimate

Extras,” but Microsoft hasn’t told anyone

what those will be, or even given any exam-

ples. Naturally, it will be simple to upgrade

Vista from inside Home Basic or Premium,

if you’re willing to shell out the extra cash.

The pricing issue becomes even more

insane when you look at the cost of other

OSes. Linux is free. Apple’s OS X costs as

little as $40. Is Windows really worth that

much more cash than the competitors?

BIG BROTHER SHENANIGANS

Dear Microsoft,

We’ve been using Firefox for the bet-

ter part of three years now. Same for

Thunderbird. Our bookmarks are in

Firefox , and our email is in Thunderbird.

If you really want us to switch back from

those products, you need to make it easy

for us, by including fi lters and tools to

convert our mail and bookmarks from

your competition.

Also, we don’t appreciate the inclu-

sion of DRM.

Sincerely,

Maximum PC

ANEMIC INTEGRATED APPS

We’ve already mentioned the Photo

Management app that won’t resize

photos, but we’re also perturbed by the

instant messaging app that only sup-

ports Microsoft’s IM protocol, and the

movie making program that only out-

puts to Microsoft’s video format. We’re

not asking for support for Apple’s for-

mats, we’d just like to be able to read

and write industry standard formats,

such as MPEG-2 and Divx, and talk to

AIM users.

User Account Control is a decent idea, but we question

some aspects of its implementation and wonder if it

will really curb the malware problem.

Sure, Microsoft took three years

longer on Vista than it should

have, and there are defi nitely

some serious problems with the

OS, including Microsoft’s less-

than-generous pricing scheme and

potential DRM hassles. That said,

anyone who wants to play DirectX

10 games—such as Crysis,

Hellgate: London , and Flight Sim

X —will eventually be forced to

abandon XP. And frankly, there’s a

lot to like about Vista. We love the

advanced multi-monitor support,

we dig the responsiveness of the

Aero Glass UI, and we don’t mind

the User Access Control hassles

too much.

Vista isn’t the best OS in every

category—OS X handles applica-

tion management and permissions

better, Linux is lighter-weight and

comes with a nearly infi nite supply

of fully functional applications—

but it is defi nitely a leader in a few

categories, namely gaming and

The Bottom

Line on Vista

WINDOWS VISTA

HOBSON’S CHOICE

More secure, better per-

forming UI, good array of

integrated applications.

SOPHIE’S CHOICE

WINDOWS VISTA

More secure, better per-

forming UI, good array of

integrated applications.

Some security features seem

goofy. We waited five years

for this?

7

JANUARY 2007 MAXIMUMPC 

desktop rendering. While it’s true that

we could be stuck with much worse, we

also see lots of room for improvement.

What We Hate About Vista

Of course, Microsoft’s new OS isn’t perfect. Here are the things
in Vista that concern us