Earlier this year, Microsoft outlined a plan to fix Windows 11, focusing on performance, reliability, and the overall experience of the operating system. After months of patching, Microsoft now claims that “the result is a Windows experience that is up to 20% more responsive.”
Microsoft has made improvements to Start, File Explorer, Search, Edge, and other parts of Windows 11 to make it faster and more responsive. “A lot of this work is about using memory and system resources more intelligently,” says Navjot Virk, vice president of Windows experiences at Microsoft. “We’ve improved memory management and efficiency in Windows to help you focus more of your PC’s resources on what you’re actively doing.”
Improvements to memory management now make a “significant difference” on PCs with just 8GB of RAM. “Windows can now keep up to 2 GB more of your active data in memory instead of moving it to slower storage,” Virk says. “For example, on PCs with 8 GB of memory or less, widgets only load when you open them, freeing up more than 200 MB of memory for your apps and other work.”
Microsoft also made Windows Update less disruptive, cleaned up the Widgets section, and finally allowed the taskbar to be repositioned to the sides or top of a screen. Signing in to Windows Hello has also been made faster and Bluetooth pairing is more reliable, “including an AirPods pairing experience that’s up to 15 seconds faster.”
The next big step is a new, much faster and better Windows Search experience. I was able to try it out last week and I think it’s one of the best new features in Windows 11 this year. It’s currently available to Windows Insiders, and Microsoft says it will “roll out more widely later this year.”
Gn tech
