Windows 7 Build 6956 Does Well in Benchmark
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 12th Dec 2008 23:44 UTC, submitted by google_ninja
Windows I'm sure you're all still (sadly) familiar with the recent 'debate' I had with InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy, which detailed a lot of silly things. The seed of that discussion was planted with Kennedy's first article which, among other things, claimed that Windows 7 performed similarly to Windows Vista (meaning, slower than XP). Leaving the thread count discussion behind, Kennedy did include a benchmark which showed that Windows 7 performed similar to Windows Vista. There's a new benchmark out now, comparing a slightly more recent build of Windows 7 to Vista RTM/SP1 and XP SP3, and in these tests, Windows 7 blows all of those out of the water.
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casuto
Member since:
2007-02-27

I find it amazing how Microsoft can spend millions on an Operating System that cannot allow a 'regular user account' to run programs without administrator or power user rights.


UAC in Vista does it. Have you ever tried Vista?

Reply Parent Score: 2

UltraZelda64 Member since:
2006-12-05

"I find it amazing how Microsoft can spend millions on an Operating System that cannot allow a 'regular user account' to run programs without administrator or power user rights.


UAC in Vista does it. Have you ever tried Vista? "

It's probably been argued to death as to whether UAC actually does anything at all. I'm on the side of those who believe that it doesn't. It's nothing more than a false sense of security in my view; a band-aid in typical Microsoft fashion to alleviate a boo-boo instead of actually tearing it apart and fixing the underlying problem. Not to mention that it just trains users to click "OK" (which they're likely already used to from previous Windows versions).

Edited 2008-12-13 16:18 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 5

centos_user Member since:
2008-11-16

This is what I was trying to say, however I am modded down because it is not politically correct and people know this is true and it is not a layer of security it is nothing more than pop up boxes....

It is amazing how I GET modded down for saying the same thing but whole well...

Reply Parent Score: 4

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jbauer Member since:
2005-07-06

It's probably been argued to death as to whether UAC actually does anything at all. I'm on the side of those who believe that it doesn't.


The following is quoted from http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/10/08/user-account-control.as...


Impact on the software ecosystem

UAC has resulted in a radical reduction in the number of applications that unnecessarily require admin privileges, which is something we think improves the overall quality of software and reduces the risks inherent in software on a machine which requires full administrative access to the system.


You can believe what you want, it's just maybe a bit unsupported by facts. UAC has made developers aware of unnecessary privileges, whether you admit it or not. And that is enough to say that it has accomplished something

Edited 2008-12-13 17:16 UTC

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google_ninja Member since:
2006-02-05

If you run as an administrator, you need to click OK to have the admin tolken get passed to the executable. If you are in a non administrator group, you need to provide the username and password of someone who is to elevate.

if you only have to press "Ok" to elevate, you are doing the equivalent of running as root in linux.

Reply Parent Score: 1

soonerproud Member since:
2008-03-05

It's probably been argued to death as to whether UAC actually does anything at all. I'm on the side of those who believe that it doesn't. It's nothing more than a false sense of security in my view; a band-aid in typical Microsoft fashion to alleviate a boo-boo instead of actually tearing it apart and fixing the underlying problem. Not to mention that it just trains users to click "OK" (which they're likely already used to from previous Windows versions).



As configured out of the box, maybe. But if you are willing to lock all users but the admin out of the admin account and force them to run as a standard user, UAC is quite effective at preventing infections. UAC also makes setting up a standard user account very simple with none of the tweaking required to make standard user accounts work flawlessly. All Microsoft really needs to do is make the standard user account default in the first place to solve the issue you just brought up.

One more thing, those prompts are not the whole of UAC. UAC is a collection of features that help to harden Windows against attacks. DEP, Protected Mode on IE, improved user accounts and registry virtualization are all features of UAC. Those are the parts you don't see that work in the background to improve security. Even users that mindlessly click ok to the prompts are still better protected under Vista than XP because of those features.

(XP does include DEP since SP2 for those who wish to enable it for all programs for better security.)

Reply Parent Score: 1