I was just surprised to work out that I have been on Windows Vista for about a year now nbsp; I joined the club with Beta 2 which was released in May '06   I also toyed with an earlier WinHEC Longhorn release but not in any substantial way.

From day one I’ve had UAC on.

Unfortunately one of the last guys to join the compatibility club was Visual Studio 2005 with the Vista Update patch

But just tonight I found the rare case of an MSI from Microsoft that failed with a cryptic message if not run as Admin: The Composite UI Application Block.

So I've put together a little grab bag of Vista UAC links and tips that I'm calling Strategies for life with UAC:

• First and foremost, know what has changed.  I wasn’t shocked when Buzz, which despite not having a substantial update since whoknowswhen, wouldn’t run out of the box.  The Audio subsystem had a major overhaul in Vista.  AppCompat came to the rescue here.
• Launch a cmd.exe shell as an admin, then run msiexec, regedit, or whatever from there.  This way you only have to elevate once at the start of your session.
• Use Compatibility, part I.  Choose XP SP2 from the Compatibility tab of the EXE File Properties page.  Raymond Chen referred to this as a Combo Meal of AppCompat settings.  Various degrees of slight of hand he said. 
• Use Compatibility, part II. You can also launch the Compatibility wizard from the Use an older program with this version of Windows link inside the Programs group in Control Panel.  This is the same set of options as is on the Properties page, however the UI is more suited to trial and error for troublesome programs, and you have the option to submit your results to Microsoft.
• Use Compatibility, part III. I am aware that there is an application compatibility toolkit available for ISV's, but haven’t had cause to look too much further.
• Use Virtualization.  Grab VPC 2007 (freebie)  I use VPC for application and installation testing with the Undo Disks feature, but it would be just as valid to run a VPC of XP or earlier if you had some app that would only run on a specific OS.

Just a note on Virtualization, I have not been able to find an authorative souce on the question of:  If I put Vista on my PC, is it legit to use my old OEM XP CAL in a VPC.  The rumours around the web seem to settle on:  a) depends on your license agreement, but I suspect it is an edge case and they are playing that card close to their chest.

If you can find an authoritive, public link on the above question please post a comment and there will be a prize.  You know I'm good for it people!

A couple of extra resources:

• Aaron Margosis' Blog
• The Non-Admin Wiki
• The UAC blog, not current but the archives have some gold.

Listening To:  Boards of Canada, Music has the right to children