Microsoft says it made Windows 11 zippier, especially on PCs with less RAM
The company also unveiled a revamped Photos app that testers can try now.
Microsoft
Microsoft has been working on some Windows 11 updates that it's starting to bring to all users after testing them with Windows Insiders. Among other things, the company said it made the operating system up to 20 percent more responsive, in part by improving memory efficiency and management. For instance, Windows 11 "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," Navjot Virk, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Windows Experiences, wrote in a blog post.
Virk noted that PCs with 8GB of memory may see "an especially meaningful difference." That's welcome, given that it's increasingly expensive to upgrade RAM in a PC. You can largely blame AI data centers for gobbling up as much memory as possible and jacking up prices for normal people. Microsoft, of course, is heavily involved in that, so improved memory management and efficiency feels like the least the company can do to mitigate the RAM crisis.
One thing Windows 11 will do on PCs with 8GB or less of RAM is to only load widgets when users actually open them. Microsoft says that'll free up over 200MB of memory for other tasks.
Microsoft says it should also be faster to pair AirPods with PCs as part of improvements to Bluetooth headphone reliability. Windows Hello logins are said to be easier, faster and more reliable too.
Windows Insider testers can now try out the revamped, AI-powered Search that the company unveiled last week. They can carry out thousands of actions directly through Search, which Microsoft is effectively turning into a chatbot.
Other updates for Insiders include a new Photos app with a revamped gallery that can pull together snaps from local storage, OneDrive and iCloud. The built-in editor is said to load 25 percent faster. The native viewer loads 30 percent quicker too, Microsoft claims.
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