Microsoft claims Windows 11 is now “up to 20% more responsive”
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.