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What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
My first thought when I watched this episode was that Paul was living in a bubble. He explained that it was really no different than the current UAC prompts, but that seem to be only for somebody that had a Windows Hello compatible camera. Paul didn’t explain this very well either. Unless I’m mistaken, if you don’t have a compatible camera, you need to either use a fingerprint or a pin, both of which are not nearly as unobtrusive as the current UAC prompt. I only use Windows in a VM, so I would have to type my PIN for every prompt. While not a huge deal, it requires me to move my hands from where I normally have them. I can’t touch-type the number row on the keyboard so I either have to look down at the keyboard or use the number pad. If I’m using my mouse, then I have to move my hand off my mouse, enter the pin, then go back to the mouse. Since I usually keep my left hand on the keyboard when using the mouse, I normally just hit shift-tab, then spacebar when the UAC prompt comes up, meaning I don’t have to move off my normaly hand position.
Now, I’m not a typical Windows home user, so let’s look at the setup my parents have. They each have a mini-pc as a desktop and they each have a laptop. None of those devices have a Windows Hello capable camera or a fingerprint reader, so they would also need to use a pin for any administrator prompt. I can tell you right now that while my mom would probably be OK with this since she probably wouldn’t see it much, my dad would turn this feature off after the 2nd time he saw it.
I completely agree that this feature will provide better protection, but I don’t agree that from a process perspective, it is the same as UAC. I would find these videos more helpful if Paul took into account that not everybody has the same setup he does. By the way, does this new feature only work with online accounts or does it also work with local accounts? I am one of those people that avoid using a Microsoft account, mainly because I can’t stand the way Microsoft shoves OneDrive down your throat, no matter how many times you tell them to go away. I also don’t want to have to deal with them auto-logging me in to any Microsoft service with my Microsoft account since I may want to use a different account or not have all my activity tied to my account.
Most of the time these videos explain the topic pretty well, but I think this one fell short.
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I have never used a Windows PC with an administrator account, that way leads to craziness.
I am an IT manager and administrator and never let any of my users or other admins log on with administrator credentials on their PCs. The admin credentials are only there for admin tasks and their admin account is only used when they need to configure a machine.
I do that at home on my private Macs and Windows PCs, Linux doesn’t let you work any other way anyway.
That is the ideal and is what Microsoft is guiding us to, but many users have spent years running as an admin user so it will be tough to change. I like where Microsoft is going with this Administrator Protection, I was merely pointing out that it isn’t quite as seamless an experience as Paul made it out to be for a lot of users. I can’t say just how ubiquitous Windows Hello capable cameras ore for most peoples computers, but for a lot of people I know, they either don’t have one, or take measures to block it until they need it for a specific task. That means that for all those people, they would need to be typing in a PIN or password at each of these prompts, leading to more friction.