Nobody was expecting Microsoft to announce Windows 11 this year. In fact, up to the reveal, we had been under the assumption that Windows 10 still had a long life ahead of it. As we get closer to the launch, we're learning more about the improvements Windows 11 brings, including new CPU, memory and storage optimisations, enabling faster performance over its predecessor. 

In a new video posted this week, Microsoft's VP of Windows Management, Steve Dispensa, runs through some of the improvements made with Windows 11, and it seems there are some deeper changes that justify the upgrade over Windows 10.

One of the improvements coming with Windows 11 is “foreground prioritisation”, allowing services not in use to be put to sleep and thus reducing memory usage by as much as 32 percent and CPU usage by as much as 37 percent. For laptops, this will have an even bigger impact, as it will result in longer battery life. Moreover, this also means that Windows will resume faster when waking up from sleep.

With the UI refresh, Microsoft has also implemented a new ‘design material' called Mica, which you can see across the file explorer, settings and almost all inbox apps. Mica is responsible for colouring the app's background based on the desktop background, and is said to be faster than the Fluent Design implemented in the Windows 10 UI. Combined with other under-the-hood improvements, this should result in a more responsive Windows experience overall.

KitGuru says: We'll have to wait and see how noticeable these improvements are, but all of the little things should add up to a more responsive and faster operating system. Are any of you planning on upgrading to Windows 11 when it launches next month? 

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