Over at Microsoft's TechNet there's an extensive, exhaustive, and thoroughly informative guide to the new UAC: Inside Windows 7 User Account Control.

The guide covers areas like the technologies behind UAC, the real purpose behind UAC elevation dialogs, and, most importantly, what's different in the Windows 7 version. Here's an excerpt from that section:

Many users complained about the fact that Windows Vista itself frequently asks for administrative rights when they perform common system management operations. It's in our best interest, because it's in the interest of our customers, to make Windows work well for standard user environments. However, elevation prompts don't educate or encourage us to do so, but they do force users to click a second time through a dialog that the vast majority of users don't read. Windows 7, therefore, set out to minimize those prompts from the default Windows experience and enable users that run as administrators to control their prompting experience.

Whether you're an IT pro or a CIO, this is required reading. The author, Microsoft Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich, is the same guy who hosted that Vista-adoption-and-deployment roundtable a few months back.

What do you think about the new UAC? Will it reduce user frustration while at the same time maintaining Windows security? (Too soon to tell, right?) Share your thoughts in the comments.

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