Microsoft Says Windows 11 Is Now More Responsive and Runs Better on 8GB PCs
Microsoft says months of fixes have made Windows 11 up to 20 percent more responsive. The changes are aimed in particular at PCs with 8GB of RAM.
Microsoft has announced that its Windows 11 operating system has become faster and more responsive after months of work, claiming an improvement of up to 20 percent. The gains are especially noticeable on computers with 8GB of RAM, a relatively small amount by current standards. The technology site The Verge reported the news.
What has improved
Earlier this year, Microsoft set out a plan to fix Windows 11, focusing on performance, reliability and the overall user experience. The company now says the changes have reached the Start menu, the File Explorer file browser, Search, the Edge browser and other parts of the system.
Navjot Virk, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Windows experiences, explains that much of the work involved smarter use of memory and system resources. According to her company's statement, Windows can now keep up to 2GB more active data in memory instead of moving it to slower storage. On PCs with 8GB of memory or less, Widgets load only when opened, freeing more than 200MB of memory for apps and other tasks.
Other changes
The company has also made Windows Update less disruptive, cleaned up the Widgets section and finally allowed the taskbar to be moved to the sides or top of the screen. Windows Hello sign-in is faster, and Bluetooth pairing is more reliable, with AirPods pairing said to be up to 15 seconds quicker.
What comes next
The next major step is a new Windows Search experience that is faster and more capable. It is currently available to Windows Insiders, who test new builds ahead of wide release. Microsoft says a broader rollout will come later this year. Tom Warren, the Verge journalist who tried it, considers it one of the best additions to Windows 11 this year.
