For corporate customers, Windows has historically proven a challenging system to configure for the standard user account

context due to application compatibility as well as a number of common user actions that required elevated privileges. To better support the use of standard user accounts, Windows Vista implements two new sets of functionality: Registry & File System Virtualization to better support legacy applications, and new privileges and management functionality. Because all applications, by default, now run as a standard user, Windows Vista will try to automatically assist applications that attempt to write to admin/system restricted portions of the OS, such as the system portions of the registry and the OS system directories. It does this by redirecting read or writes to these areas to special virtualized locations in the user's local profile. In essence, the application believes it is writing to those sensitive locations, but it is actually writing to the user's profile. This allows most legacy applications to run on Windows Vista successfully without modification. To further support the standard user scenarios, Windows Vista implements several additional key features. Standard users now can:

Change the displayed time (not the actual system clock) using the Change the time zone privilege (see Figure 3).

Configure Wired Equivalent Privacy/Wi-Fi Protected Access (WEP/WPA) settings when they connect to wireless networks (or conversely, profiles for wireless can be centrally managed via Group Policy).

Change power management settings. Install critical Windows updates (or this can be enforced by administrators). Install printer and other device drivers approved by IT administrators, as well as ActiveX control controls from administrator-approved sites, if enabled via Group Policy settings.

Figure 3 Standard users can now change the time zone(Click the image for a larger view)