To Vista or not to Vista

[Misirlou]

Oh, one other thing. Reverting to XP will not be possible for people who need new hardware. Microsoft has already stopped, or will very soon stop, providing new XP licenses to the big computer manufacturers. So if you buy a new machine, chances are XP won't be available at all, no matter what kind of tantrum you throw.

You might think you could just try putting an old copy of it on your new hardware, but there are already quite a few units out for which XP drivers were never and will never be written. My brother just picked up an HP laptop that's been available for about 9 months now that suffers from that. He can find no XP drivers for the ethernet card. He thought he needed XP for some music authoring software, but it turned out the vendor updated it for Vista about two months ago.

The only applications I own that won't work in Vista (even in XP compatability mode) are some games. Not really a showstopper for photography...

[gkroeger]

Whats being discussed as Vista's UAC (user account control) is actually two separate things: 

1) The UAC funstionality thats prompts for administraive credentials
2) Secure Desktop, where the contents are dimmed behind the UAC prompt

...
hope this helps - John
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Thanks for the great tip Joh.

[David White]

Oh, one other thing. Reverting to XP will not be possible for people who need new hardware. Microsoft has already stopped, or will very soon stop, providing new XP licenses to the big computer manufacturers. So if you buy a new machine, chances are XP won't be available at all, no matter what kind of tantrum you throw.
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You can get XP from the OEM's (Dell, etc.) until the end of the year.  OEM's are not required to stop shipping units with XP until 2008.  Stock up now!  

[gkroeger]

The Secure Desktop component is what is nailing the display profile.  It *is* possible to benefit from the security UAC provides by disabling the Secure Desktop component:

Click  Start Menu | Run, then type "secpol.msc".   This will open Local Security Policy (generating a UAC prompt   ).  In the Left Pane, expand Local Policies, then click on Security Options.  In the list in the Right Pane, locate User Account Control: Switch to the Secure Desktop when prompting for elevation (very near the bottom of the list).  Dbl-click this and disable.


Or, for those who enjoy living on the edge:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
PromptOnSecureDesktop value=0

This setting is also available via Active Directory Group Policy for managed machines:

hope this helps - John
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secpol.msc doesn't seem to be present on Vista Home Premium... but editing the registry key does the trick!