Windows is used by over 1 billion users according to Microsoft

It does not happen very often that Microsoft provides information on the number of devices or users of its Windows operating systems or other products.

Yesterday was such a day, as Microsoft revealed that Windows had more than 1 billion users. The post, published on the Windows Developer blog, focuses on performance for the most part. Its title, "Delivering Delightful Performance for More Than One Billion Users Worldwide", and one of the paragraphs in the post claim that Windows has crossed the 1 billion users mark worldwide.

Microsoft writes: "Today, we’re going to give you a behind-the-scenes peek into how performance improvements are delivered! Windows operates at a massive scale – with over one billion users and a rich PC ecosystem, and there are innumerable combinations of usage patterns, key apps, and hardware".

The post focuses on performance, specifically how Microsoft improved performance in various ways. The company boasts that Windows 11 "is the most reliable version of Windows ever", that users see a "6% average reduction in energy consumption" if they follow Microsoft's Energy Recommendation advice, and that Windows 11's time to desktop has been cut by 10% and that the impact of startup apps was reduced by over 50%.

The article offers even more insights. Here are a few highlights:

• Microsoft runs "over one million machine hours of validation" each day.
• Diagnostic data provides Microsoft with over 2.5 million cabs per day, over 12 million performance traces per year, and over 70.4 billion scenario performance data points per year.
• The new Microsoft Teams up is two times faster than the old and uses half its resources.
• Frequently used shell interactions were improved by "as much as 15%".

Microsoft explains that the new boot process improved startup significantly. Engineers cut the startup time of apps by ensuring "that apps the user is trying to interact with are responsive and prioritized" and by reducing contention.

File Explorer, the default file manager of the Windows 11 operating system, has seen improvements as well, according to Microsoft. The company claims that it has improved bulk file deletion operations by up to 67% and improved the launch time of the application as well.

Microsoft attached a long list of performance improvements that it made between the months of February and May 2023 to the post as well. Here is the entire list:

• Taskbar improvements to ensure Taskbar is readily available after logging in
• Task View performance improvements when devices are under heavy load
• Improved performance of Windows Notification Service
• Improved launch time of Quick Settings and Notification Center
• Reduced threads, dlls, and graphics device count in Explorer
• Reduced CPU usage of explorer
• Reduced memory usage of Notification Center
• Touch keyboard performance improvements
• Resource usage reductions in multi-user scenarios
• Reduced voice access and Narrator latency in larger documents
• Improved voice typing activation time
• Improved speed of theme changes
• Reduced size on disk by leveraging features-on-demand via the Store

You can check out the full article here.

Now You: have you noticed any performance improvements recently? (via Deskmodder)

Advertisement