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- Microsoft has been working on improving Windows 11 drivers a good deal this month
- The latest move is to block poor-quality drivers that have a negative impact on laptop battery life
- That comes on top of other work including ensuring that graphics drivers aren't overwritten with older versions by Windows Update
Microsoft is busy fixing Windows 11, as I'm sure you're aware by now, and we've just heard about another move to bolster the quality of drivers for the OS – one that'll help prolong laptop battery life.
Windows Latest reports that Microsoft has revealed it has a new 'Driver Quality Initiative' (DQI) in a blog post which details what this is all about. In a nutshell, Microsoft is engaged in a "comprehensive, ecosystem-wide effort designed to fundamentally raise the bar on driver quality, reliability and security across Windows".
That includes "deprecating outdated or low-quality drivers" and ensuring that verification of third-party drivers and quality standards are generally higher.
Microsoft states: "We are expanding how driver quality is measured beyond crashes to include stability, functionality, performance, and power and thermal impact, giving partners clearer signals to improve the real customer experience."
In other words, driver testing will go beyond merely ensuring that they don't crash the system, to encompass them running smoothly and performing well – and then there's the bit about "power and thermal impact" which is the good news for laptop owners.
This means making sure that drivers don't go awry in terms of power drain, which is obviously a key element to help with the battery life of any given Windows 11 laptop.
As Windows Latest observes, there has historically been a problem with notebooks running out of juice, and being overheated, by bad drivers. This can occur when a laptop is idling on the desk, or in standby tucked away in a bag, but the result is the same – you come to use the notebook and find the battery is almost run out.
Analysis: driving forward
So, Microsoft is now putting Windows 11 drivers under more scrutiny, not just making sure that they don't cause stability issues (crashes). Any driver that provokes undue battery drain (or the other issues touched on above) will no longer make the cut for the OS.
Of course, as with a lot of the changes which are now being applied to Windows 11, you may be left wondering: why wasn't this the case in the first place? Clearly, it should have been, but at least Microsoft is making amends now.
This isn't the only way in which the software giant is improving drivers in Windows 11. Last week, as flagged by Windows Latest, we heard about Microsoft admitting that Windows 11 can overwrite your GPU driver with an older version (in some circumstances), so Windows Update is being changed to ensure this can no longer happen.
Another driver-related move revealed earlier this month was Cloud-Initiated Driver Recovery (CIDR), a feature that allows Microsoft to roll back a bad driver to a previously working version on a Windows 11 PC via the cloud (should a dodgy driver get through).
All in all, it's clear that device drivers are something Microsoft has been rethinking a good deal lately, and, pushing aside the fact that this work should have been done before now, that's great to see. With any luck, come the end of the year, dodgy drivers will be a much rarer event for Windows 11 users – and recovery from any incidents will be more easily facilitated, too.
Another useful feature that Microsoft is working on for Windows Update is the ability to stamp out those dreaded update installation failures, too. They've been around and making themselves felt as a recurring annoyance ever since Windows 10 arrived.
➡️ Read our full guide to the best laptops
1. Best overall:
Apple MacBook Air 13-inch M5
2. Best budget:
Apple MacBook Neo
3. Best Windows 11 laptop
Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch
4. Best thin and light:
Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i
5. Best Ultrabook
Asus Zenbook S 16
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