Bath is a beautiful city in the UK. Unfortunately, as a hardware writer renting creaky, drafty, listed buildings dating from the Georgian period, that beauty does not really translate into decent internet speeds. At the very least, the latest Windows 11 preview build offers one small feature that might make my life slightly easier.
Rolling out to the Dev and Beta channel, preview build 26220.6760 will offer an internet speed check right from the Windows system tray in the taskbar. This feature is currently only accessible to Windows Insiders on Windows 11, version 24H2, and it won't mean my enduring friendship with Ookla's Speedtest.net will have to come to an end either. According to Windows Latest, Microsoft entered into a partnership with Ookla back in 2023 to provide Bing's speed test widget, and the new taskbar feature is just a more local redirect to this Bing widget.
Windows Insiders can either launch the speed test from the Wi-Fi quick settings menu or by simply right-clicking the network icon in the system tray on the right-most side of the taskbar. Folks can test Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and cellular internet connections this way—and likely be just as frustrated when your best attempts at troubleshooting don't work, as is so often my experience.
Obviously, this isn't the only new feature on its way for Windows Insiders. Preview Build 26220.6760 also seeks another avenue to foist Copilot upon managed commercial devices with a Microsoft 365 subscription, adding a new Microsoft 365 Copilot page to the Get Started setup process. As you may already be aware, the AI assistant Copilot will automatically be installed alongside Microsoft 365 from October. At the time of writing, there'll apparently be no option to opt out beyond simply choosing another office suite provider (I'm quite partial to LibreOffice's suite of apps myself).
Speaking of, Insiders using Copilot+ PCs will also see some tweaks to the File Explorer Search Box following January's big update. That beefy update at the start of the year introduced "semantic indexing along with traditional indexing," meaning you could simply describe one of the images stored on your PC in the search bar to find it rather than remembering the file name. The preview build adjusts the wording in the File Explorer Search Box to more directly highlight this feature…though I reckon I'll just stick with my robust, personal filing system (that only makes sense to me).
Besides a few other fixes and features, it's not the most momentous preview build update. You may think that's because the Windows 11 25H2 update is now live, but that's hardly reinventing the minimalist pane either.
We appear to be in an era of 'The more operating systems change, the more they stay the same', with Windows 11 only just becoming more popular than its predecessor this July—four years after its release. Given that most official support for Windows 10 will be ending this October, it's about time.
1. Best overall:
HP Omen 35L
2. Best budget:
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i
3. Best high-end:
Corsair Vengeance A7500
4. Best compact:
Velocity Micro Raptor ES40
5. Alienware:
Alienware Area-51
6. Best mini PC:
Minisforum AtomMan G7 PT
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