Latest Windows 10 preview looks to extend your Surface's battery life

Surface devices

A new Windows 10 preview build landed last Thursday, but then this weekend just gone, Microsoft pushed out another preview hot on its heels – indicating that testing work is intensifying as the Anniversary Update approaches (it's due on August 2).

Build 14385 was unleashed at the weekend with the usual accompanying blog post that noted Microsoft was now "churning out builds like crazy", with a load of bug fixes on board.

Redmond said it wanted to get the build out quickly so as to give the maximum amount of testing to these hundreds of new fixes.

They include improved battery life for those running Windows 10 preview on Surface devices, and the smoothing over of a load of issues with various apps including Spotify random crashes, and errant clipping with Google's Chrome browser, as well as problems with the LastPass and AdBlock extensions in Microsoft's Edge browser.

There were, of course, plenty more fixes than this, and if you want to check out the full list see the post here.

Swift pace

It's likely that we'll see preview builds coming out pretty quickly for the rest of this month as Microsoft tries to tighten everything up.

Another interesting point to note is that this is build 14385, and it scotches speculation that the next build from Microsoft, which was rumored to be version 14384, would be the RTM (release to manufacturing) client.

Obviously, that isn't the case – although clearly we are in the final stretch with testing of the Anniversary Update.

The previous Windows 10 preview build fixed plenty of issues itself including problems with Surface machines being connected to external monitors, and erratic behavior with Bluetooth mice.

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).