JohnIK, which version of Vista are you using? I'm using Home Premium, and am not having some of the issues you seem to be encountering - mind you, my usage is likely far more simplistic than yours, but for example, I have to be changing something pretty serious for the 'confirm or logon administrator action' box to appear.

Also, the Advanced box in my setup does not have the font size box locked out - it is available as soon as you select something to apply it to. I haven't experimented with it much, since the present font sizes work for me.

Perhaps because I am wary of having a bunch of boot-up password needing actions and was careful only to engage what Vista absolutely demanded - a password from startup after a complete shutdown, I've avoided some of this?

My impression with regard to the language used by Vista is that they hired a crew from the Mac crowd: the 'cuteness' and the 'you're simple, we'll make it blindingly easy' factor present in MacIntosh from the beginning really annoys me, and I never found macs particularly easier to use or more accomodating than a PC set up properly for whatever task I was doing.