Microsoft: Windows 7 will do less nagging

Paul Cooke, director of Windows 7 client enterprise security, has stepped forward to promise that Windows 7 will feature fewer alerts originating from User Account Control. UAC was designed to curtail malware's ability to hijack a Windows workstation, by protecting against modifications to key operating system settings and against the installation of new applications.

Unfortunately, the side effect to this well-intentioned plan was "click fatigue," in which users were simply tired of having to approve and re-approve what used to be simple configuration changes. What's more, many users just began approving everything, including malware--thereby defeating the entire purpose of UAC in the first place.

Cooke claims that Windows 7 users would improve significantly from Windows Vista in this regard: "From our beta and internal testing, we expect a 29% decrease in UAC prompts compared to Windows Vista." Having a third fewer nagging messages is wonderful, though one can always hope for an even steeper reduction.

For more on this story:
- check out this security advisory at eWeek

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