How To Tame Microsoft Windows Vista's UAC

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Is there any feature of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Windows Vista more universally reviled than the User Account Control, or UAC for short? It's a necessary evil at best, and a hideous inconvenience at worst.

Or, to take a more moderate stance, it's a feature the likes of which have been badly needed in Windows for some time now -- a way to moderate administrative user access so programs that don't need administrative access don't get it.

I take the second view, but I know there are plenty of people who take the first one, and I don't blame them. Aside from disrupting a good many existing work habits, there are also questions of how programs behave, or ought to behave, under UAC.