Microsoft’s been claiming for a while now that they’re working on improving performance and responsiveness in Windows, with a particular focus on making more efficient use of memory. This is probably the only positive thing to come out of the RAM crisis Microsoft helped create and is currently still fueling. The company’s now claiming that Windows 11 is “up to 20% more responsive” thanks to these efforts.
The result is a Windows experience that’s up to 20% more responsive, with improvements you can feel as soon as you boot into your PC and extending to Start, File Explorer, Search, Snipping Tool, Microsoft 365, Edge and more.
A big part of that work is making smarter use of memory and system resources. We’ve improved memory management and efficiency across Windows to help keep more of your PC’s resources focused on what you’re actively doing. That work can make an especially meaningful difference on PCs with 8GB of memory. Windows can now keep up to 2GB more of your active data in memory instead of moving it to slower storage, helping your PC stay responsive as you open more apps or browser tabs. Windows is also making additional memory-saving improvements that reduce background memory use. For example, on PCs with 8GB of memory or less, Widgets load only when you open them, making more than 200 MB of memory available for your apps and other work. It’s one example of the broader work underway to reduce the Windows memory footprint and deliver a fast, responsive experience across the PCs people use every day, an area we’ve made an explicit focus for Windows.
↫ Navjot Virk on the Windows Blogs
If, for a moment, we take these claims at face value, they’re simply good news for every Windows 11 user, and legitimately the only good thing to come out of the RAM crisis. These kind of claims are always hard to measure, especially considering just how varied the Windows software and hardware ecosystem is, but I’m sure people good at benchmarking are going to try and find some more definitive answers here.
In the same blog post, Microsoft also highlights several other recent improvements it’s made to Windows 11, like the new search experience we talked about recently, a brand new Photos application, some new whiteboard-like application, and several more things. Considering how complex Windows’ versioning scheme and various branches have become, I have no idea when these features and improvements actually make their way to your machine.
On a slightly related note, Microsoft also unveiled that it’s bringing Microsoft Defender to Linux, with a particular focus on desktop Linux. Even Microsoft has to face the reality of the rising popularity of Linux on the desktop.
Let me take that claim at face value for a moment, why not. Such an improvement is certainly impressive.
However, this does not put Microsoft into any good light: Why were those 20% not realised before you release this pile of garbage? Why did you push out such obviously un-optimised badly designed software? You are not a small 3 man open source initiative of volunteers working out of curiosity in their spare time.
In my opinion, they have just proven their own incompetency. If they realised 20% now, why would I trust them with any release or new product in the future? How do I know, that there is not another 20% hidden there where they are just too lazy (or indeed incompetent?) to lift it?
> On a slightly related note, Microsoft also unveiled that it’s bringing Microsoft Defender to Linux, with a particular focus on desktop Linux. Even Microsoft has to face the reality of the rising popularity of Linux on the desktop.
This shows the purest and final corruption of the system: this rubbish is only there to comply with insurance policies and audits. If you really want to see the scum of the earth, don’t look too far. Just visit the audit cartel. And they know what they are doing, they know.
One has to wonder what bringing a windows virus scanner and its extras is going to look like. Not that i think linux is immune to malware or anything but they are different sorts of systems with different versions of problems.