It will be interesting to hear how the general user population reacts to user account protection. Particularly when you first sit down to install new software and configure the computer it can understandably be encountered quite a bit. The message are not always clear about what action is being referred to.

A good example of this is seen the first time you visit a site using Flash and do not have the plug-in installed UAC pops up, but it does not do a very good job letting you know just what it needs permission to do:

The action is listed as “Internet Explorer Add-on Installer” but to install what? You and I may know that this is a tool for installing any plug-ins provided by Microsoft, but many users will just hit cancel because they may be unaware they did anything to cause it. After all, in most cases you don’t know a page has Flash until you try to load it. If you are curious enough to hit “details” you will see only a GUID added which is a detail helpful to just about nobody. If you do not respond, it will time out in about a minute or two, but if you hit continue. The next popup is an IE security warning which clearly identifies what is being installed (as we are used to seeing). Hit install, and the job is done (there are no further security warnings).