Vista's flaws surface again on eve of Windows 7 beta

IDG News Service - Attendees of the International Conference on Cyber Security 2009 in New York today were reminded of the shortcomings of Windows Vista a day before Microsoft Corp. is expected to reveal the first beta for Vista's successor, Windows 7.

While giving a presentation on the security differences between Vista and Windows 7, Microsoft Investigative Consultant Michael Dunner asked audience members to raise their hands if they've used Vista.

When people responded, Dunner asked, "How many of you like it?" Only about half of those who acknowledged using Vista raised their hands.

Dunner also described Vista's User Account Control (UAC) feature as "annoying" and said that it's one of the operating system's "biggest problems." When he said that, an audience member called out, "Yes, it is annoying."

Problems with UAC have been widely publicized and even spoofed by television commercials from competitor Apple Inc. The feature was meant to improve the security of Vista by preventing users without administrative privileges from making unauthorized changes to a PC. But because of how it was set up, it can prevent even authorized users from being able to access applications and features through a series of screen prompts that interrupt normal workflow to ask users for their account privileges.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is expected to unveil the Windows 7 beta during his keynote address Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Microsoft has publicly acknowledged the limitations of UAC. The company has called it one of Vista's most "controversial" features and has said it will improve the feature in Windows 7 to make it more efficient and to reduce the number of prompts users receive.

Dunner's comments and the lackluster audience response to Vista was evidence of users' overall disappointment with the operating system, which many view as a failure for Microsoft. In addition to problems consumers have reported, many business customers have opted to skip Vista and run Windows XP until Windows 7 is available.