Symantec to make Vista less annoying

What do you do if Windows is broken? Count on Microsoft to fix it (see above for an example of what happens when you do)? Symantec certainly doesn't. The company found a new feature in Vista--User Account Control--annoying, so it took matters into its own hands. User Account Control is designed to inform the user whenever a program wants to access the inner layers of the OS and to ask the user permission before lifting any security barriers for that program. "I have been running Vista for a while, and UAC bugged the heck out of me--to the point where I tuned it out and, eventually, turned it off," said Rowan Trollope, vice president of consumer products at Symantec. Thus, a plan was hatched to overlay Vista with technology that would "enhance" UAC--by essentially reducing the number of user prompts and making it less annoying. Symantec hasn't offered much more information than that yet but one would hope that the UAC-enhancer will come built-in to Norton 360, which launches alongside Vista Home this month.

For more on Symantec's Vista security plans:
- see this CNET article