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In 2022, Microsoft began shipping DirectStorage, a technology that promises to speed up games by improving how the SSD interacts with the GPU to improve data transfers. In 2021, Microsoft promised that DirectStorage would be made available to both Windows 10 and Windows 11 users, good news for those who don’t want to upgrade. If that’s the case, you can’t help but be a bit suspicious of DirectStorage, the next-generation storage accelerator that Microsoft is promising. In fairness, Windows 11 is a little faster, but just not that much to be significant. Simply put, there just isn’t any measurable performance difference between Windows 10 and Windows 11 right now. Unfortunately, our recent tests don’t bear that out. But it’s to Microsoft’s credit that no major exploit really plagued Windows 10 or Windows 11.
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No one, least of all Microsoft, wants PC users to be hacked. In the end, the hassle in upgrading an older PC to Windows 11 might make some people ride it out until they get a new PC. Then there were the exceptions, and the workarounds. For a while, the restrictions that Microsoft put on the available supported processors made Windows 11 desirable no one likes being told that they can’t upgrade, especially when they’ve paid good money for an existing PC. Quite frankly, the transition to Windows 11 has always been surrounded by a “will they or won’t they approach” to Windows 11’s hardware requirements. All of these subscriptions will work on both Windows 10 and Windows 11. Add to that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and Microsoft 365 - heck, even Solitaire had a subscription to eliminate ads before it was added to Game Pass. Both, however, come with subscriptions: optional “professional” content for Clipchamp, and Designer will be part of Microsoft 365. Some of these applications, like Clipchamp and Designer, are Web “apps” specifically designed to run on both Windows 10 and Windows 11.
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