Vista might have been more secure than previous Microsoft operating systems, but that security came at a pretty high price. One of the biggest usability challenges occurred because of its security prompts, which came frequently, in duplicate and at odd intervals. That is to say, Vista users were bombarded with them.
The problem stemmed from Vista's User Account Control (UAC), which was turned on by default and gave end users administrative privileges over their security settings. Consequently, if a user attempted to run a certain application, they would automatically receive a security pop-up. "[Microsoft] got a lot of complaints around that," said Jason Miller, data and security team leader for Shavlik Technologies, a patch management company.
Windows 7 revamped the security control model to allow more flexibility and options. Whereas Vista users had to either adopt a "paranoid mode" security level or none at all, Windows 7 users now have the option of selecting various additional levels of security, therefore controlling the number of security prompts they receive.
Security experts say that the revised feature doesn't necessarily make the OS less secure but gives users more options around their required level of security.
"It allows more exceptions, and those pop-ups are not as prevalent as before," Miller said.
